Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Zircon

A natural zirconium silicate gem with high brilliance and fire, often confused with the synthetic imitation cubic zirconia.

A soft, lustrous white native metal with the highest electrical conductivity, used in jewelry, coinage, and industry.

A dense, durable, silvery-white precious metal that resists corrosion, used in fine jewelry and catalytic converters.

A deep black variety of banded chalcedony, often closely related to or treated like onyx, used for jewelry and carvings.

A lightweight black organic gemstone formed from fossilized wood under pressure, a type of lignite long used in mourning jewelry.

Aquamarine crystals still attached to their natural host rock, prized as mineral specimens showing beryl in its original pocket setting.

A rare ferric-iron-dominant tourmaline that forms in oxidized evaporite settings, appearing as black to red-brown prismatic crystals.

A Norwegian intrusive rock whose feldspar crystals flash silvery-blue, widely used as blue pearl granite countertops.

A green, glauconite-rich marine sandstone that records slow deposition on continental shelves and is used as a soil amendment.

The cinnamon-to-honey colored variety of grossular garnet, prized in jewelry and revered as the gem 'gomed' in Vedic astrology.

The most common garnet, an iron aluminum silicate in deep red to brownish-red hues, used as a gem and an industrial abrasive.

A colorless, transparent variety of topaz valued as an affordable, hard, brilliant alternative to diamond in jewelry.