Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Sandstone

A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.

Iron-stained sandstone whose red color comes from hematite coatings, formed in oxidizing desert, river, and coastal environments.

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

A coarse sedimentary rock of rounded pebbles and gravel cemented in a finer matrix, recording ancient rivers and beaches.

A pale translucent chalcedony threaded with brown-black manganese and iron dendrites that mimic tiny ferns, mosses or landscapes.

A landscape-patterned Chinese jasper prized for warm cherry-red, cream, and green bands resembling painted scenery.

Hard surface crust formed when iron oxides cement soil and sediment into a rusty, durable duricrust in tropical and weathered terrains.

A natural volcanic glass with rich brown and black mahogany-like swirls created by iron oxide inclusions.

An iron-rich sedimentary rock, often heavy and rusty-weathering, historically mined as a major source of iron ore.

An opaque brown chalcedony whose iron-stained banding mimics deserts, dunes, and distant mountain skylines.

A fractured fine-grained limestone whose iron-stained crack networks form natural scenes resembling ruined cities and landscapes.

An opaque yellow-to-golden variety of jasper, an iron-stained microcrystalline quartz prized for warm color and durable polish.

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

An orange-to-rust colored variety of natural volcanic glass whose warm tone comes from iron oxide staining within the obsidian.