Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Chalky Limestone
A soft, fine-grained, porous white limestone made largely of microscopic calcareous plankton skeletons, the rock that forms classic white cliffs.
sedimentary
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentaryLithographic Limestone
Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.
sedimentary
Oolitic Limestone
Limestone built from tiny rounded ooid grains resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Fossiliferous Limestone
Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.
sedimentary
Crinoidal Limestone
A fossiliferous limestone built largely from the disc-shaped skeletal plates of crinoids, marine animals known as sea lilies.
sedimentary
Shelly Limestone
A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.
sedimentary
White Beryl
The colorless to milky-white variety of beryl, known mineralogically as goshenite and once used to imitate diamond and other gems.
gemstone
White Opal
The most common precious opal, with a pale milky body that shows softer pastel flashes of play-of-color throughout.
gemstone
White Topaz
A colorless, transparent variety of topaz valued as an affordable, hard, brilliant alternative to diamond in jewelry.
gemstone
White Moonstone
The classic moonstone: a milky-white feldspar showing the prized floating blue-to-silver adularescent glow that gives the gem its name.
gemstone
White Garnet
The rare colorless-to-white grossular garnet, also called leuco garnet, prized by collectors for its purity and unusual lack of color.
gemstone
White Agate
A white to grayish banded chalcedony, the natural base color of much agate and the substrate for many dyed stones.
gemstone
White Obsidian
A pale, partly crystallized volcanic glass; genuinely white obsidian is uncommon and usually reflects devitrification or spherulitic growth in the glass.
igneous
White Tourmaline
A colorless to milky-white elbaite tourmaline known as achroite, the rare nearly pigment-free member of the tourmaline group.
gemstoneWhite Cliffs Opal
Precious opal from the historic White Cliffs field in New South Wales, Australia, famous for light opal and rare opal pineapples.
gemstone
Chalk
A soft, white, fine-grained limestone made almost entirely of microscopic marine plankton skeletons.
sedimentary
Micrite
A very fine-grained limestone made of microcrystalline calcite mud, dense and smooth, deposited in calm carbonate settings.
sedimentaryCarrara Marble
A famous white to blue-grey Italian marble from Carrara, prized for centuries by sculptors and architects for its purity and fine grain.
metamorphic
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
Coquina
A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.
sedimentary
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