Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Alabaster

A soft, fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum (or banded calcite) long prized as a carving and ornamental stone.

Coarse, clear-to-white crystalline calcite that cements limestones, contrasting with fine muddy micrite.

A famous white to blue-grey Italian marble from Carrara, prized for centuries by sculptors and architects for its purity and fine grain.

The fine white marble of Mount Pentelikon used to build the Parthenon, famous for the golden patina it develops with age.

A soft, white, fine-grained limestone made almost entirely of microscopic marine plankton skeletons.

A pure, translucent white marble from the Greek island of Paros, the preferred stone of ancient sculptors for its waxy glow.

The pure colorless variety of beryl, valued as crystal specimens and as a brilliant alternative to clearer gemstones.

A green-and-white banded metamorphic marble whose wavy mica layers resemble the rings of a sliced onion.

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

A glassy calcium borosilicate forming wedge-tipped prismatic crystals, usually colorless to pale yellow or pink, sometimes faceted as a gem.

The calcium-iron garnet species, ranging from brilliant green demantoid to golden topazolite and jet-black melanite.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.

Scheelite is a calcium tungstate ore of tungsten, famous for its brilliant blue-white fluorescence under ultraviolet light.