Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Chrysoprase

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

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 lithified glacial till, a poorly sorted rock of mixed boulders, pebbles and fine matrix that records ancient glaciations.

A 'mixed rock' showing swirling light and dark bands, formed where high-grade metamorphism causes rock to begin partially melting.

A soft, earthy sedimentary rock made of a mixture of calcium carbonate and clay, intermediate between limestone and mudstone.

An earthy aluminum-rich residual rock and the world's principal ore of aluminum, often showing distinctive pea-like pisolites.

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.

A dense, black, mid-rank coal with high energy content, widely used for power generation and to make coke for steelmaking.