Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Fossiliferous Limestone

Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.

A porous limestone built from the calcium carbonate skeletons of corals and reef organisms, the lithified remains of ancient or modern reefs.

A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.

A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.

A fossiliferous limestone built largely from the disc-shaped skeletal plates of crinoids, marine animals known as sea lilies.

Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.

A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.

A fossiliferous jasper packed with spiral snail shells, technically a silicified gastropod limestone from Wyoming.

A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.

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