Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Chalky Limestone

A soft, fine-grained, porous white limestone made largely of microscopic calcareous plankton skeletons, the rock that forms classic white cliffs.

A rose-pink manganese silicate marbled with black veins, prized as a tough ornamental and occasionally faceted gemstone.

A depleted mantle peridotite of olivine and orthopyroxene, the refractory residue left after basaltic melt is extracted from the mantle.

An ultramafic intrusive rock made almost entirely of olivine, representing mantle material.

A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.

Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.

A variety of pyroxenite composed of both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene with little olivine, found in layered intrusions and the mantle.

A rare ultramafic volcanic rock that erupts from deep in the mantle and is the primary natural source of diamonds.

A chromium-rich magnesium garnet of the pyrope series that crystallizes in the deep mantle and is a valuable diamond indicator mineral.

The most common garnet, an iron aluminum silicate in deep red to brownish-red hues, used as a gem and an industrial abrasive.

A rare ultrapotassic, magnesium-rich volcanic rock from deep in the mantle, famous as the diamond host at Argyle in Australia.

A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.

Fossil shells whose original material has been replaced by opal, preserving ancient marine forms in common or precious opal.

A trade term for orange garnets, mainly manganese-rich spessartine and the brownish hessonite variety of grossular.