Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Owyhee Blue Agate

A soft sky-blue chalcedony from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its calming, opaque powder-blue color.

A richly colored red banded agate prized by lapidaries for its deep crimson-to-brown tones reminiscent of pigeon's blood.

A banded combination rock of golden tiger's eye, red jasper, and metallic hematite, formed in ancient iron deposits.

A rich green, fuchsite-rich metamorphic rock from southern Africa, prized as a carving and ornamental stone.

A warm golden-to-amber variety of calcite, a soft calcium carbonate mineral valued for its honeyed glow and easy carving.

A water-bearing massive grossular garnet, usually green or pink, widely used as a tough jade-like carving stone.

One of the two jade minerals, an amphibole prized for its extreme toughness and soft, waxy green hues used in carving for millennia.

A deep black variety of banded chalcedony, often closely related to or treated like onyx, used for jewelry and carvings.

A bold black-and-white banded chalcedony named for its orca-like coloring, popular as carvings and statement jewelry.

The soft pink, usually cloudy variety of quartz colored by trace titanium or microscopic inclusions, popular for carvings and beads.

Translucent banded calcium-carbonate stone deposited in caves and springs, prized for ornamental carvings despite its softness.

A granite-like rock containing orthopyroxene, formed at high temperatures and pressures and often classed with the granulites.

A blue-hued, high-pressure metamorphic schist colored by the amphibole glaucophane, formed in cold, deep subduction zones.

A green, foliated low-grade metamorphic rock colored by chlorite, actinolite, and epidote, marking the greenschist metamorphic facies.

A high-grade metamorphic rock formed in the deep, hot crust, marked by anhydrous minerals like pyroxene and garnet.