Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Basalt
A fine-grained, dark volcanic rock that erupts as fluid lava and forms most of the ocean floor and many lava plateaus.
igneous
Cataclasite
A cohesive fault rock formed by brittle crushing and grinding of rock along a fault zone, with angular fragments in a fine matrix.
metamorphic
Metabasalt
Basalt that has been metamorphosed, developing new minerals like chlorite, actinolite, and epidote that give it a greenish color.
metamorphic
Variolite
A mafic volcanic rock speckled with pale spherical 'varioles,' typically formed in rapidly chilled basaltic pillow lavas.
igneous
Gabbro
A coarse-grained, dark mafic intrusive rock that is the plutonic equivalent of basalt, rich in plagioclase and pyroxene.
igneous
Scoria
A dark, highly vesicular volcanic rock full of gas bubbles, denser than pumice, common as red or black lava rock.
igneous
Greenstone
A general field term for green, low-grade metamorphosed basaltic rocks colored by chlorite, epidote, and actinolite.
metamorphic
Diabase
A tough, dark, medium-grained igneous rock with the composition of basalt, common in dikes and sills.
igneous
Limburgite
A dark, glass-rich volcanic rock of olivine and augite phenocrysts set in a feldspar-free glassy groundmass, named from the Kaiserstuhl region.
igneous
Tintenbar Opal
Rare precious opal from Tintenbar in northern New South Wales, Australia, occurring in volcanic basalt rather than sedimentary rock.
gemstone
Andesite
A fine-grained, intermediate volcanic rock common at subduction-zone volcanoes, between basalt and rhyolite in composition.
igneous
Amphibolite
A dark, dense metamorphic rock dominated by hornblende and plagioclase, formed by medium- to high-grade metamorphism of basalt.
metamorphic
Harzburgite
A depleted mantle peridotite of olivine and orthopyroxene, the refractory residue left after basaltic melt is extracted from the mantle.
igneous
Migmatite
A 'mixed rock' showing swirling light and dark bands, formed where high-grade metamorphism causes rock to begin partially melting.
metamorphic
Tholeiitic Basalt
The most abundant basalt type on Earth, a silica-saturated subalkaline lava that forms ocean crust and flood basalts.
igneous
Granulite
A high-grade metamorphic rock formed in the deep, hot crust, marked by anhydrous minerals like pyroxene and garnet.
metamorphic
Feldspar
The most abundant mineral group in Earth's crust, feldspars are aluminosilicates that form much of granite and many igneous rocks.
mineral
Plagioclase
The most abundant rock-forming feldspar group, a continuous solid-solution series from sodium albite to calcium anorthite that builds much of the crust.
mineral