Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Pyrite

The brassy iron sulfide mineral famous as 'fool's gold,' known for sharp metallic cubes and a much higher hardness than real gold.

A bronze-colored iron sulfide notable for being the most magnetic of the common sulfide minerals and an important nickel host.

A silver-white iron arsenic sulfide and the most common arsenic mineral, known for striking sparks and a garlic smell when struck.

A brassy copper-iron sulfide that is the world's most important copper ore, often showing colorful iridescent tarnish.

A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.

A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.

A nickel sulfide famous for delicate brass-yellow hairlike crystals that form radiating sprays inside cavities and geodes.

Dark, organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock formed in oxygen-poor waters, often a source rock for oil and gas.

An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.

A trade name for deep wine-red garnet, typically a rich pyrope-almandine stone marketed for its dramatic, fiery color.

A bright strawberry-red garnet, typically an almandine-pyrope blend prized for its juicy, lively red color in jewelry.

A trademarked deep purple-red rhodolite garnet from India, named for its rich grape-like color from the pyrope-almandine series.

A vivid pinkish-red rhodolite garnet named for its raspberry color, a bright pyrope-almandine blend popular in jewelry.

A royal-blue feldspathoid mineral with white calcite veining, often confused with lapis lazuli but lacking its golden pyrite flecks.