Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Nephrite

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

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 black volcanic glass speckled with gray-white cristobalite snowflakes, formed as obsidian begins to crystallize.

A glittery, strongly foliated rock made mostly of aligned mica flakes that split into thin, shiny sheets.