Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Garnet Schist

A shiny, foliated schist studded with red garnet crystals that grew during medium-grade regional metamorphism.

A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.

A plagioclase feldspar famous for labradorescence, a dramatic flash of iridescent blue, green, and gold across a dark gray stone.

A gray-brown jasper whose mottled, wrinkled patterning resembles elephant hide, also sold as Miriam or calligraphy stone.

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

A pale jasper crossed by distinctive blue-gray veins or lines, valued by lapidaries for its calm color contrast.

Natural volcanic glass speckled with embedded mineral crystals (phenocrysts) such as feldspar or cristobalite that grew before the lava chilled.

A white, porous borate mineral webbed with gray-black veins, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

A dark gray copper sulfide that is one of the richest copper ores, prized by collectors when found as rare sharp crystals.

Natural emerald crystals still embedded in their host rock, prized as mineral specimens that show how the gem grew in place.

Also called Sci-Fi Jasper, a Mexican jasper-rhyolite with swirling abstract patterns in cream, tan, gray, pink, and green.

The principal iron ore, a heavy iron oxide ranging from metallic silver-gray to earthy red, always leaving a tell-tale red-brown streak.