Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Granodiorite

A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.

A medium-grade metamorphic rock rich in aligned platy minerals that gives it a shiny, easily splitting, foliated texture.

A trade name for lightly saturated elbaite tourmalines in delicate pastel pinks, mints, peaches, and blues popular in modern jewelry.

Tourmaline colored by copper, producing the famous vivid neon blues, greens and teals known commercially as Paraiba-type gems.

A colorful trade-name material, often dyed and reconstituted, sold as jasper; vivid blues and greens are typically artificially enhanced.

Black volcanic glass crossed by a fine network of grey or brown veins that resemble a spider's web.

A magnesium carbonate mineral, usually chalky white with grey veining, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

A mottled, multicolored obsidian blending black, brown, grey, and tan patches like a calico cat's patchwork coat.

A rare Indonesian jasper from Sulawesi known for ghostly tube structures, brecciated patterns, and contrasting grey, red, and purple zones.

A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.

Black volcanic glass studded with oval, peanut-shaped grey-white spherulites of radiating crystals frozen in the glass.

A dark, foliated schist rich in graphite that leaves a grey-black mark and forms from metamorphosed carbon-rich sediments.

A black volcanic glass threaded with delicate grey, swirling lace-like bands of flow lines that show beautifully when polished.

An opaque grey-brown common opal forming nodules and concretions, historically called liver opal for its dull brownish color.