Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Willow Creek Jasper
A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.
mineral
Gary Green Jasper
An Oregon jasper, also called larsonite, of silicified fossil wood showing olive-green fields laced with black dendritic patterns.
mineral
Staurolite Schist
A mica schist studded with brown staurolite porphyroblasts, sometimes forming the cross-shaped twins known as fairy stones.
metamorphic
Minette
A dark, mica-rich lamprophyre dike rock in which biotite and augite phenocrysts sit in a groundmass dominated by alkali feldspar.
igneous
Crocodile Jasper
A deep green-and-black stromatolitic jasper, essentially Kambaba Jasper, with circular eye patterns resembling crocodile skin.
mineral
Soapstone
A soft, talc-rich metamorphic rock with a soapy feel, easily carved and highly heat-resistant for cookware and sculpture.
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
Cordierite Hornfels
A tough, fine-grained contact-metamorphic rock containing cordierite, often spotted, formed by heat from nearby igneous intrusions.
metamorphic
Comendite
A peralkaline rhyolite, a silica-rich volcanic rock with excess alkalis, named for San Pietro Island's Comende district.
igneous
Needle Tourmaline
Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.
mineral
Urtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous
Variolite
A mafic volcanic rock speckled with pale spherical 'varioles,' typically formed in rapidly chilled basaltic pillow lavas.
igneous
Kalahari Jasper
An African picture jasper from the Kalahari region with warm desert-toned banding evoking dunes and savanna.
mineral
Lapis Lazuli
An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.
metamorphic
Cataclasite
A cohesive fault rock formed by brittle crushing and grinding of rock along a fault zone, with angular fragments in a fine matrix.
metamorphic
Scenic Jasper
A patterned jasper whose bands and inclusions create miniature landscapes of deserts, mountains, and skies within the stone.
mineral
Fossiliferous Limestone
Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.
sedimentary
Brandberg Amethyst
A prized Namibian quartz combining amethyst, smoky, and clear quartz in single crystals, often with phantoms and enhydros.
crystal
Bloodstone Jasper
A dark green jasper-chalcedony speckled with red iron-oxide spots, classically known as bloodstone or heliotrope.
mineral
Kambaba Jasper
A dark green-and-black stromatolite jasper patterned with swirling orbs, formed from fossilized ancient microbial colonies.
sedimentary
Websterite
A variety of pyroxenite composed of both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene with little olivine, found in layered intrusions and the mantle.
igneous
Kersantite
A dark mica lamprophyre with biotite and augite phenocrysts in a plagioclase-dominated groundmass, the feldspar counterpart of minette.
igneous
Tactite
A contact-metasomatic calc-silicate rock, essentially a skarn, formed where intrusions react with carbonate rocks and often host ore.
metamorphic
Porcelanite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock with a dull porcelain-like texture, intermediate between soft diatomite and dense chert.
sedimentary