Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Soapstone
A soft, talc-rich metamorphic rock with a soapy feel, easily carved and highly heat-resistant for cookware and sculpture.
metamorphic
Ruin Marble
A fractured fine-grained limestone whose iron-stained crack networks form natural scenes resembling ruined cities and landscapes.
sedimentary
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Picture Jasper
An opaque brown chalcedony whose iron-stained banding mimics deserts, dunes, and distant mountain skylines.
mineral
Sagenite Agate
A chalcedony agate filled with radiating needle-like mineral inclusions, prized for its starburst and spray patterns.
gemstoneFireworks Obsidian
Black volcanic glass dotted with radiating spherulite bursts that look like exploding fireworks frozen in the stone.
igneous
Greywacke
A hard, dark, poorly sorted sandstone with a muddy matrix, typically deposited by underwater turbidity currents.
sedimentaryAsphalt Rock
A porous sedimentary rock naturally saturated with bitumen, dark, tarry-smelling, and historically mined for paving.
sedimentaryStripe Obsidian
Obsidian crossed by parallel flow bands of differing color, formed as layers of lava with slightly different compositions froze into glass.
igneous
Moldavite
A rare forest-green natural glass formed by a meteorite impact about 15 million years ago, found mainly in the Czech Republic.
gemstone
Feldspathic Sandstone
A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.
sedimentary
Red Jasper
An opaque, iron-rich variety of microcrystalline quartz known for its deep brick-red color and ancient history as a stone of strength and grounding.
gemstone
Cave Creek Jasper
An opaque jasper from the Cave Creek area of Arizona, prized for earthy mottled and banded patterns in warm desert tones.
mineral
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstoneMarl
A soft, earthy sedimentary rock made of a mixture of calcium carbonate and clay, intermediate between limestone and mudstone.
sedimentary
Blue Quartz
A naturally blue quartz colored by tiny mineral inclusions such as dumortierite or scattered rutile and tourmaline fibers.
crystal
Cherry Creek Jasper
A landscape-patterned Chinese jasper prized for warm cherry-red, cream, and green bands resembling painted scenery.
mineralWillow Creek Jasper
A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.
mineralDallasite Jasper
A green-and-white volcanic breccia from Vancouver Island, cemented by jasper and rich in epidote, popular as a regional lapidary stone.
gemstone
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystalRibbon Jasper
A banded jasper showing parallel ribbon-like stripes of contrasting color formed by layered silica and mineral deposition.
mineral
Aventurine
A translucent quartz speckled with glittery mineral inclusions that produce a shimmering aventurescence, most often green.
crystal
Vogesite
A dark hornblende-rich lamprophyre dike rock with amphibole and augite phenocrysts in an alkali-feldspar-dominated groundmass.
igneousUrtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous