Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Chrysoberyl

An exceptionally hard beryllium aluminum oxide prized for golden hues, sharp cat's-eye effect, and the rare color-change alexandrite variety.

A soft mint-green variety of common opal, usually opaque and colored by trace copper or nontronite inclusions rather than play-of-color.

The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.

A broad family of vividly patterned jaspers from Madagascar, including orbicular and scenic varieties prized for colorful, eye-catching designs.

A soft-toned cream-to-butterscotch jasper colored by iron oxides, prized by lapidaries for its smooth, even, opaque finish.

An intensely green tourmaline colored by chromium and vanadium, prized for its vivid emerald-like color from East Africa.

A black iron-manganese niobate that is a primary ore of niobium, forming a continuous series with tantalite (together called coltan).

A porous sedimentary rock naturally saturated with bitumen, dark, tarry-smelling, and historically mined for paving.

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

A black rare-earth niobium-tantalum oxide, often radioactive and metamict, mined for yttrium, niobium, and associated rare elements.

A loose, wind-blown silt deposit, typically buff-colored and very fertile, that forms thick blankets and stands in steep cliffs.

An old varietal name for alkali- and cesium-rich beryl, typically colorless to pale pink, overlapping with vorobyevite and morganite.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.