Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Chalcocite

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

The opaque black iron-rich variety of tourmaline (schorl), forming striated prismatic crystals popular as a protective grounding stone.

A soft, colorful calcium fluoride mineral famous for cubic crystals, perfect octahedral cleavage, and fluorescence under UV light.

A rare obsidian showing brilliant fiery iridescence caused by thin nanolayers of magnetite crystals diffracting light within the glass.

A boron-rich silicate gemstone group famous for occurring in every color of the rainbow, sometimes several within a single crystal.

A rare opal pseudomorph from White Cliffs, Australia, formed as opal replaced clustered crystals into a pineapple-like shape.

A high-temperature potassium feldspar that forms glassy crystals in fast-cooled volcanic rocks, sometimes cut as a moonstone gem.

A South African quartz whose central crystal is coated in a cactus-like crust of tiny secondary points, also called spirit quartz.

A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.

A group of coarse, water-rich plutonic rocks dominated by large hornblende crystals set in feldspar, intermediate between lamprophyre and diorite.

Fine acicular (needle-like) tourmaline crystals, often black schorl, frequently seen as slender inclusions within clear quartz.

A calcium- and ferrous-iron-rich tourmaline, the iron analogue of uvite, forming dark brown to black crystals in skarns and metamorphic rocks.

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.