Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Rose Quartz
The soft pink, usually cloudy variety of quartz colored by trace titanium or microscopic inclusions, popular for carvings and beads.
crystal
Strawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystal
Lithium Quartz
A quartz crystal containing pink to lilac lithium-bearing mineral inclusions that give a soft cloudy lavender or rose coloration.
crystalQuartz Arenite
A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.
sedimentary
Star Rose Quartz
Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.
gemstoneUnakite Jasper
An altered granite of pink feldspar, green epidote and quartz, mottled pink-and-green and popular as a tumbled and carving stone.
metamorphic
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstoneSandstone
A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.
sedimentary
Granite
A coarse-grained, speckled intrusive rock built from quartz, feldspar, and mica, forming the bedrock of the continents.
igneous
Unakite
An altered granite mottled pink and green from feldspar and epidote, popular as a tough, colorful ornamental rock.
metamorphic
Felsite
A general term for light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks rich in quartz and feldspar, like rhyolite.
igneous
Quartzite
An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.
metamorphic
Metaquartzite
A hard, tough metamorphic rock of fused quartz grains, formed by recrystallizing quartz sandstone under heat and pressure.
metamorphic
Latite
The fine-grained volcanic equivalent of monzonite, an intermediate lava with nearly equal feldspars and little free quartz.
igneous
Feldspathic Sandstone
A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.
sedimentary
Syenite
A coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock dominated by alkali feldspar with little or no quartz.
igneous
Chert
A hard, fine-grained sedimentary silica rock that breaks with sharp conchoidal edges, prized by ancient toolmakers.
sedimentary
Granodiorite
A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.
igneous
Dacite
A fine-grained volcanic rock intermediate between andesite and rhyolite, common at explosive stratovolcanoes.
igneous
Metasandstone
Sandstone altered by metamorphism, with partly recrystallized quartz grains, transitional between true sandstone and quartzite.
metamorphic
Phyllite
A fine-grained foliated metamorphic rock between slate and schist, recognized by its silky silvery sheen and wavy, crinkled surfaces.
metamorphicSlate
A fine-grained, low-grade metamorphic rock that splits into flat sheets along slaty cleavage, long used for roofing and flooring.
metamorphic
Shale
The most common sedimentary rock, a fissile mudrock of compacted clay and silt that splits into thin layers.
sedimentary
Dalmatian Jasper
A cream-colored spotted stone resembling a Dalmatian dog, made of feldspar and quartz dotted with dark mineral grains.
igneous