Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Yellow Tourmaline

Bright yellow to golden tourmaline colored by manganese, with the most vivid canary stones among the rarest tourmaline hues.

A trade name occasionally used for golden-yellow beryl (golden beryl or heliodor), the iron-colored yellow variety of the emerald mineral.

Limonite is an amorphous brown iron oxide ore, the rust-colored material behind ochre pigments and bog iron.

A translucent apple-green chalcedony colored by nickel, the most prized green variety of the quartz family.

A brecciated, chatoyant quartz with swirling blue, gold, and brown fibers that shimmer like a stormy sky.

A microcrystalline quartz jasper marked by small concentric ring or eye patterns that resemble the eyes of birds.

A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, classically black or black-and-white, long favored for cameos and beads.

A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.

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

Rutile is a major titanium ore and the famous golden needle inclusion that gives rutilated quartz its shimmering threads.

A jasper made of angular fragments naturally cemented back together, typically showing red and brown pieces in a quartz matrix.

A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.

A banded, metamorphosed iron formation in which bright red jasper alternates with silvery hematite or magnetite layers.

Ancient chemically deposited rock of alternating iron-oxide and silica bands recording Earth's early oxygenation and a major iron ore source.