Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Opalite
A man-made opalescent glass that glows milky blue in reflected light and warm orange when backlit, often sold as a crystal.
crystal
Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass packed with tiny copper crystals, traditionally reddish-brown but also made in blue and green.
crystal
Blue Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass colored deep blue with cobalt and studded with tiny copper crystals that mimic a starry night sky.
gemstone
Zincite
A rare zinc oxide best known for its deep red to orange color, classically from Franklin, New Jersey, and as colorful man-made crystals.
mineral
Micrite
A very fine-grained limestone made of microcrystalline calcite mud, dense and smooth, deposited in calm carbonate settings.
sedimentary
Rock Gypsum
A soft sedimentary evaporite made of massive gypsum, deposited when sulfate-rich seawater or lake water evaporates and concentrates.
sedimentary
Carbonatite
A rare igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals, source of the world's most important rare-earth-element and niobium deposits.
igneous
Lherzolite
The most common type of mantle peridotite, made of olivine with both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene, representing fertile upper-mantle rock.
igneous
Calderite
A manganese-iron garnet that forms in metamorphosed manganese deposits, intermediate in composition between spessartine and andradite.
mineralGondite
A metamorphic rock made chiefly of manganese-rich spessartine garnet and quartz, formed from ancient manganese-bearing sediments.
metamorphic
Henritermierite
A rare manganese-bearing hydrogarnet notable for being tetragonal rather than cubic, found in metamorphosed manganese deposits in Morocco.
mineral
Dunite
An ultramafic intrusive rock made almost entirely of olivine, representing mantle material.
igneous
Barium Feldspar
The barium end-member of the feldspar group, represented by celsian, occurring in barium-rich metamorphic and manganese deposits.
mineral
Paracelsian
A rare barium aluminosilicate that is a monoclinic polymorph of celsian, found in barium-rich metamorphic and manganese deposits.
mineral
Celsian
A rare barium-rich feldspar that forms in manganese and barium-enriched metamorphic and hydrothermal deposits, the barium end-member of the feldspar family.
mineralBanalsite
A rare barium-sodium aluminosilicate of the feldspar group, found chiefly in metamorphosed manganese ore deposits.
mineral