Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Pipestone

A soft, fine-grained red metamorphosed claystone, sacred to many Native American peoples and carved into ceremonial pipes.

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

The most common garnet, an iron aluminum silicate in deep red to brownish-red hues, used as a gem and an industrial abrasive.

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

A trade term for orange garnets, mainly manganese-rich spessartine and the brownish hessonite variety of grossular.