Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Amazonite

The blue-green gem variety of microcline feldspar, often mottled with white, prized as an affordable ornamental stone.

Fossil shells whose original material has been replaced by opal, preserving ancient marine forms in common or precious opal.

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

A rare ammonium feldspar formed by hydrothermal alteration, in which ammonium ions replace potassium, and a useful exploration indicator.

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

A speckled green-and-black stone resembling kiwi fruit, technically a quartz-amazonite aggregate rather than true jasper.

A finely speckled pale jasper trade stone named for its sesame-seed-like flecks, closely related to Kiwi Jasper.

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

A common potassium feldspar identical in composition to orthoclase but more ordered, famous for its green gem variety amazonite.

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

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

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

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

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

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