Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Cave Creek Jasper
An opaque jasper from the Cave Creek area of Arizona, prized for earthy mottled and banded patterns in warm desert tones.
mineral
Sodalite
A royal-blue feldspathoid mineral with white calcite veining, often confused with lapis lazuli but lacking its golden pyrite flecks.
mineral
Turquoise
A prized blue to blue-green copper-aluminium phosphate, often veined with dark matrix, treasured for jewelry across many cultures.
mineralCloud Agate
A chalcedony agate with soft, billowing cloud-like masses of gray and white suspended in a translucent body.
gemstoneFrost Agate
A pale chalcedony agate with cloudy, frost-like white patterning suggesting frost on a window or icy crystalline textures.
gemstonePolyhedroid Agate
A rare agate that forms naturally with flat polygonal faces and angular geometric shapes rather than the usual rounded nodule.
gemstone
Black Shale
Dark, organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock formed in oxygen-poor waters, often a source rock for oil and gas.
sedimentary
Charnockite
A granite-like rock containing orthopyroxene, formed at high temperatures and pressures and often classed with the granulites.
igneous
Brecciated Jasper
A jasper made of angular fragments naturally cemented back together, typically showing red and brown pieces in a quartz matrix.
sedimentaryNoreena Jasper
A rare Australian jasper from the Pilbara with bold red, yellow, and black abstract patterns, prized by collectors.
mineral
Metaconglomerate
A conglomerate altered by heat and pressure, often with its rounded pebbles stretched and flattened into elongated lenses.
metamorphic
Bituminous Shale
A dark, organic-rich shale loaded with kerogen and bitumen that can yield oil and gas, often finely laminated and combustible.
sedimentary
Norite
A coarse-grained mafic plutonic rock similar to gabbro but with orthopyroxene as the dominant pyroxene instead of clinopyroxene.
igneous
Feldspathic Sandstone
A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.
sedimentary
Brown Obsidian
Obsidian colored brown by iron oxide inclusions, frequently banded or swirled with black as in mahogany obsidian.
igneousMarl
A soft, earthy sedimentary rock made of a mixture of calcium carbonate and clay, intermediate between limestone and mudstone.
sedimentary
Vogesite
A dark hornblende-rich lamprophyre dike rock with amphibole and augite phenocrysts in an alkali-feldspar-dominated groundmass.
igneous
Pietersite
A brecciated, chatoyant quartz with swirling blue, gold, and brown fibers that shimmer like a stormy sky.
gemstone
Anthracite
The highest-rank coal, a hard, lustrous black rock that burns cleanly with little smoke and high heat output.
metamorphic
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstone
Turritella Agate
A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.
sedimentary
Essexite
A dark, silica-undersaturated gabbroic rock containing nepheline along with plagioclase, alkali feldspar, and pyroxene, also known as nepheline monzogabbro.
igneous
Lherzolite
The most common type of mantle peridotite, made of olivine with both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene, representing fertile upper-mantle rock.
igneous