Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Lithic Sandstone

A sandstone in which the dominant grains are fragments of pre-existing rocks rather than single minerals, signaling rapid erosion nearby.

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

A coarse rock of angular, sharp-edged fragments cemented in a matrix, marking nearby rockfall, faulting, or impact.

A cohesive fault rock formed by brittle crushing and grinding of rock along a fault zone, with angular fragments in a fine matrix.

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

A hard, dark, poorly sorted sandstone with a muddy matrix, typically deposited by underwater turbidity currents.

Sand-grained limestone composed of carbonate particles such as shell fragments and ooids cemented into a calcite rock.

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

A rare breccia formed by meteorite impact, containing shocked rock fragments and glassy melt blobs welded together.

A general field term for green, low-grade metamorphosed basaltic rocks colored by chlorite, epidote, and actinolite.

A general term for light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks rich in quartz and feldspar, like rhyolite.