Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Carnelian

A warm orange-to-red variety of chalcedony quartz colored by iron oxide, used since antiquity for seals, beads, and cabochons.

A translucent chalcedony decorated with branching, fern-like manganese or iron oxide inclusions resembling tiny plants.

A hard aluminum borosilicate famous for its rich denim-blue color, often forming dense fibrous masses or coloring quartz blue.

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

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

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

A foliated schist threaded with black tourmaline (schorl) needles, marking boron-rich metamorphic or metasomatic conditions.

A metamorphic rock of calcium-rich silicate minerals formed from impure limestone or dolomite altered by heat and fluids.

A green ornamental stone, often serpentine-rich marble or verde antique, valued for its rich green color and white veining.

A soft sedimentary evaporite made of massive gypsum, deposited when sulfate-rich seawater or lake water evaporates and concentrates.

A dark, mineral-rich dike rock with abundant mica or amphibole phenocrysts set in a fine groundmass, often associated with gold and diamonds.

A fine-grained, feldspar-rich dike rock with a trachytic texture, essentially a hypabyssal equivalent of trachyte or syenite.

A distinctive tourmaline-rich granite from Cornwall, prized as an ornamental stone for its pink feldspar set with radiating black tourmaline.