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.
mineral
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentary
Lithographic Limestone
Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.
sedimentary
Fossiliferous Limestone
Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.
sedimentary
Shelly Limestone
A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.
sedimentary
Oolitic Limestone
Limestone built from tiny rounded ooid grains resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Crinoidal Limestone
A fossiliferous limestone built largely from the disc-shaped skeletal plates of crinoids, marine animals known as sea lilies.
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
Arsenopyrite
A silver-white iron arsenic sulfide and the most common arsenic mineral, known for striking sparks and a garlic smell when struck.
mineral
Micrite
A very fine-grained limestone made of microcrystalline calcite mud, dense and smooth, deposited in calm carbonate settings.
sedimentary
Pyrrhotite
A bronze-colored iron sulfide notable for being the most magnetic of the common sulfide minerals and an important nickel host.
mineral
Calcirudite
A coarse-grained limestone built of gravel-sized carbonate clasts, the carbonate equivalent of a conglomerate or breccia.
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
Chalcopyrite
A brassy copper-iron sulfide that is the world's most important copper ore, often showing colorful iridescent tarnish.
mineral
Oolite
A limestone made of tiny spherical ooids, resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Dolomite
A calcium-magnesium carbonate mineral and rock similar to limestone but harder and only weakly reactive to acid.
mineral
Chalk
A soft, white, fine-grained limestone made almost entirely of microscopic marine plankton skeletons.
sedimentary
Coquina
A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.
sedimentary
Calcilutite
A very fine-grained, mud-sized limestone formed from carbonate mud, smooth and dense with conchoidal fracture.
sedimentary
Marble
A metamorphosed limestone of interlocking calcite crystals, prized for sculpture and architecture for its workability and polish.
metamorphic
Pisolite
A sedimentary rock built from pea-sized concentric spheres called pisoids, often carbonate but sometimes iron or aluminum-rich.
sedimentary
Peacock Ore
A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.
mineral
Calcarenite
Sand-grained limestone composed of carbonate particles such as shell fragments and ooids cemented into a calcite rock.
sedimentary
Tufa
A porous, spongy freshwater limestone that precipitates around springs, streams and lakes, often encrusting plants and moss.
sedimentary