Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Spinel

A durable magnesium aluminum oxide gem that occurs in many colors and was long mistaken for ruby.

A combustible black sedimentary rock formed from ancient plant matter and burned for centuries as a primary fossil fuel.

Obsidian with a vivid blue sheen or hue; natural blue obsidian is rare, and intensely uniform blue material is usually manufactured glass.

Small, intensely red chrome-pyrope garnets from the Czech Bohemian region, famous for densely set antique Victorian jewelry.

Abundant banded chalcedony from southern Brazil, the world's main source of agate slices and dyed agate products.

A glacier-transported banded agate from the Lake Superior region, colored by iron into rich reds and oranges, and Minnesota's state gemstone.

Molybdenite is the primary ore of molybdenum, a soft, greasy, silver-gray sulfide that closely resembles graphite.

A hydrated volcanic glass with pearly, onion-like concentric cracks that pops into lightweight white granules when heated.

An ultramafic rock of olivine and clinopyroxene, a peridotite variety common as cumulate layers in mafic intrusions.

A variety of pyroxenite composed of both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene with little olivine, found in layered intrusions and the mantle.

A metasomatic rock formed when alkali-rich fluids from carbonatite or alkaline intrusions transform surrounding country rock.

A dense, dark ultramafic plutonic rock composed almost entirely of pyroxene minerals, often associated with peridotite and layered intrusions.

A tough, fine-grained contact-metamorphic rock containing cordierite, often spotted, formed by heat from nearby igneous intrusions.

A contact-metasomatic calc-silicate rock, essentially a skarn, formed where intrusions react with carbonate rocks and often host ore.