Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Thulite

A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.

A vivid green copper carbonate mineral famous for swirling concentric bands, used as an ore of copper and an ornamental gemstone.

A brilliant orange-red lead vanadate mineral forming hexagonal crystals, prized by collectors and mined as an ore of vanadium.

The colorless to milky-white variety of beryl, known mineralogically as goshenite and once used to imitate diamond and other gems.

Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.

A banded, porous limestone deposited by mineral springs, prized as a warm-toned natural building and tile stone.

Natural emerald crystals still embedded in their host rock, prized as mineral specimens that show how the gem grew in place.

The brassy iron sulfide mineral famous as 'fool's gold,' known for sharp metallic cubes and a much higher hardness than real gold.

A delicate pink to lavender garnet from Tanzania's Umba Valley, a pyrope-spessartine blend often marketed as a soft, light-toned rhodolite.

A colorful trade-name material, often dyed and reconstituted, sold as jasper; vivid blues and greens are typically artificially enhanced.

A glassy calcium borosilicate forming wedge-tipped prismatic crystals, usually colorless to pale yellow or pink, sometimes faceted as a gem.