Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Fire Opal

A translucent to transparent opal in warm yellow, orange, and red tones, prized for body color rather than play-of-color.

A coarse sedimentary rock of rounded pebbles and gravel cemented in a finer matrix, recording ancient rivers and beaches.

Rounded nodules of translucent obsidian, named after a Native American legend, that glow smoky brown when held to light.

A pale translucent chalcedony threaded with brown-black manganese and iron dendrites that mimic tiny ferns, mosses or landscapes.

A conglomerate altered by heat and pressure, often with its rounded pebbles stretched and flattened into elongated lenses.

Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.

A banded rhyolitic volcanic rock with swirling tan, red, and yellow iron-oxide layers prized as a decorative picture stone.

A lithified glacial till, a poorly sorted rock of mixed boulders, pebbles and fine matrix that records ancient glaciations.

A translucent chalcedony from Montana filled with black and red dendritic inclusions that look like moss, ferns, or scenic landscapes.

A soft, fine-grained red metamorphosed claystone, sacred to many Native American peoples and carved into ceremonial pipes.