Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Chrysocolla

A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.

A vivid green copper carbonate mineral famous for swirling concentric bands, used as an ore of copper and an ornamental gemstone.

A deep blue copper carbonate mineral that forms in oxidized copper deposits, often alongside green malachite.

A field term for hard black massive manganese oxides, often botryoidal, mined as an important manganese ore.

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

A rare deep-blue copper silicate mineral, often fibrous or massive, named for the Shattuck Mine in Arizona and prized by collectors.

A naturally magnetic black iron oxide and a major iron ore; strongly magnetic specimens are known as lodestone.

A striking lead chromate mineral prized for its brilliant orange-red prismatic crystals, with the finest specimens from Tasmania.

Smithsonite is a zinc carbonate ore famous for glassy botryoidal crusts in blue-green, pink, and yellow hues.

Goethite is a common brown iron oxyhydroxide, the main crystalline component of limonite and rust, with shimmering botryoidal forms.

A hydrous zinc silicate, often sky-blue, that is an ore of zinc and a collectible mineral forming botryoidal crusts and crystals.

A translucent yellow-green silicate famous for its botryoidal 'grape' clusters, often hosting needle-like sprays of black epidote.