Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Shelly Limestone
A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.
sedimentary
Coquina
A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.
sedimentary
Calcarenite
Sand-grained limestone composed of carbonate particles such as shell fragments and ooids cemented into a calcite rock.
sedimentary
Marl
A soft, earthy sedimentary rock made of a mixture of calcium carbonate and clay, intermediate between limestone and mudstone.
sedimentary
Diatomaceous Earth
Soft, lightweight siliceous rock made of fossilized diatom shells, valued as a filter, abrasive, and absorbent.
sedimentary
Shell Opal
Fossil shells whose original material has been replaced by opal, preserving ancient marine forms in common or precious opal.
gemstone
Turritella Jasper
A fossiliferous jasper packed with spiral snail shells, technically a silicified gastropod limestone from Wyoming.
sedimentary
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentary
Fossiliferous Limestone
Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.
sedimentary
Chalky Limestone
A soft, fine-grained, porous white limestone made largely of microscopic calcareous plankton skeletons, the rock that forms classic white cliffs.
sedimentary
Oolitic Limestone
Limestone built from tiny rounded ooid grains resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Lithographic Limestone
Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.
sedimentary
Crinoidal Limestone
A fossiliferous limestone built largely from the disc-shaped skeletal plates of crinoids, marine animals known as sea lilies.
sedimentary
Indicolite
The blue variety of tourmaline, a relatively rare and prized color ranging from teal and greenish blue to deep indigo.
gemstone
Indian Agate
An affordable multicolored banded and mossy chalcedony from India, common in tumbled stones, beads, and meditation pieces.
gemstone
Emerald in Matrix
Natural emerald crystals still embedded in their host rock, prized as mineral specimens that show how the gem grew in place.
gemstone
Ruby in Zoisite
A striking rock of green zoisite studded with red-pink ruby crystals and black hornblende, also called anyolite.
metamorphic
Petrified Wood
Ancient wood whose organic tissue has been replaced by silica, preserving the grain, rings, and structure of the original tree in stone.
sedimentary
Fossil Opal
Fossil material whose original substance has been replaced by opal, preserving ancient shapes in common or play-of-color opal.
gemstone
Oolite
A limestone made of tiny spherical ooids, resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Sparite
Coarse, clear-to-white crystalline calcite that cements limestones, contrasting with fine muddy micrite.
sedimentary
Coral Rock
A porous limestone built from the calcium carbonate skeletons of corals and reef organisms, the lithified remains of ancient or modern reefs.
sedimentary
Turritella Agate
A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.
sedimentary
Blue Calcite
A soft, soothing powder-blue variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral often sold as gentle tumbled stones.
mineral