Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Arkose

A coarse, feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that records rapid erosion of granitic source rock under arid conditions.

A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.

A hard, dark, poorly sorted sandstone with a muddy matrix, typically deposited by underwater turbidity currents.

A poorly sorted, muddy sandstone with abundant clay matrix between its grains, typically dark and deposited by turbidity currents.

A graded sedimentary deposit laid down by underwater turbidity currents, recording avalanches of sediment cascading down submarine slopes.

A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.

A soft metamorphic rock made of talc and magnesite or dolomite, formed by hydrothermal alteration of ultramafic rocks.

An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.

A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.