Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Carrara Marble
A famous white to blue-grey Italian marble from Carrara, prized for centuries by sculptors and architects for its purity and fine grain.
metamorphic
Travertine
A banded, porous limestone deposited by mineral springs, prized as a warm-toned natural building and tile stone.
sedimentary
Tufa
A porous, spongy freshwater limestone that precipitates around springs, streams and lakes, often encrusting plants and moss.
sedimentary
Oolitic Limestone
Limestone built from tiny rounded ooid grains resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Fossiliferous Limestone
Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.
sedimentaryLithographic Limestone
Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.
sedimentary
Cipollino Marble
A green-and-white banded metamorphic marble whose wavy mica layers resemble the rings of a sliced onion.
metamorphic
Carbonatite
A rare igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals, source of the world's most important rare-earth-element and niobium deposits.
igneous
Septarian Concretion
A rounded sedimentary nodule cracked internally and filled with veins of yellow calcite, prized for its striking dragon-skin patterning.
sedimentary
Calc-schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of calcite mixed with mica, quartz, and calc-silicate minerals, derived from marly sediments.
metamorphicPicasso Jasper
A marbled, abstractly patterned stone resembling modern art, technically a metamorphosed limestone rather than a true silica jasper.
metamorphic
Opalite
A man-made opalescent glass that glows milky blue in reflected light and warm orange when backlit, often sold as a crystal.
crystal
Crocoite
A striking lead chromate mineral prized for its brilliant orange-red prismatic crystals, with the finest specimens from Tasmania.
mineral
Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass packed with tiny copper crystals, traditionally reddish-brown but also made in blue and green.
crystal
Vanadinite
A brilliant orange-red lead vanadate mineral forming hexagonal crystals, prized by collectors and mined as an ore of vanadium.
mineral
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentary
Pink Emerald
A trade name sometimes used for pink beryl (morganite), the manganese-colored rose-to-peach variety of the emerald mineral.
gemstone
Pastel Tourmaline
A trade name for lightly saturated elbaite tourmalines in delicate pastel pinks, mints, peaches, and blues popular in modern jewelry.
gemstone
Calcarenite
Sand-grained limestone composed of carbonate particles such as shell fragments and ooids cemented into a calcite rock.
sedimentary
Maskelynite
A natural glass formed when plagioclase feldspar is transformed by shock pressure during meteorite impacts, preserving crystal shape but losing crystal structure.
mineral
Siderite
Siderite is an iron carbonate ore, a brown rhombohedral mineral of the calcite group found in sediments and veins.
mineral
Feruvite
A calcium- and ferrous-iron-rich tourmaline, the iron analogue of uvite, forming dark brown to black crystals in skarns and metamorphic rocks.
mineral
Flame Agate
A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.
gemstone
Pyralspite Garnet
Pyralspite is the aluminum garnet series uniting pyrope, almandine, and spessartine, covering most red, orange, and purple gem garnets.
mineral