List of All Minerals

Or so it will be one day soon.





New minerals are constantly added.

Pyrite

Pyrite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Pyrite, aka fool's gold, is a common mineral in all types of rocks. It is metallic, opaque and while most known for its cubic crystals, can also have pyritohedral or octahedral crystals, or be granular, massive, reniform or potryoidal in habit. It is pale silvery-yellow when fresh but gets darker as it tarnishes.

Chalcopyrite

Chalcopyrite ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Chalcopyrite is deeper yellow than pyrite, but it is also metallic, opaque, and can occur in massive, botryoidal, reniform or compact habits. It is often found in hydrothermal sulphide deposits, where it has formed in hydrothermal veins. It is an important copper ore.

Galena

Galena by Mike Beauregard via Flickr.com

Galena is a sulphide mineral, more exactly a lead sulphide. It is a common ore mineral and often found in lead-zinc-copper hydrothermal depositis. It is lead-grey in colour and often forms crystals but can also be found as massive habits. It is often associated with other minerals such as pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, calcite, quartz and fluorite.

Sphalerite

Sphalirite, Ian Geoffrey Stimpson via Flickr.com

Sphalerite is zinc sulphide. It is not common on its own, but more often in alloy with iron. It is greenish without iron, black with little iron, and reddish with much iron. It has coarse crystals and is often massive, and it can form stalactitic or botryoidal aggregates. It is mainly found in hydrothermal lead-zinc depositis and it is a main zinc ore.

Azurite

Azurite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Azurite is a deep azure blue copper hydroxide. It can be earthy, nodular or massive, or it can form prismatic crystals. It is found in the oxidised zones of copper deposits, which have formed in limestone and other carbonate rocks. Like other carbonates, it reacts to HCl.

Malachite

Malachite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Malachite is a pale to dark green common secondary copper mineral. It can be botryoidal or stalactitic, or form prismatic, circular or twinned crystals. It can be transculent to opaque, and it is formed in the oxidised parts of copper deposits, often together with azurite. Malachite has been used extensively in jewelry, and even to decorate palaces.

List of all minerals - Hematite

Hematite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Hematite is an iron oxide which can be very various in appearance. Specular hematite for example comes in a hexagonal, platy, shiny, silver-coloured crystal. Massive hematite is reddish brown and has a massive, earthy habit. Kidney ore is red and reniform. Hematite is found in hydrothermal veins, contact metamorphic rocks, volcanic fumeroles, and ironstones.

List of all minerals - Calcite

Calcite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Calcite, a common carbonate mineral, is either transculent or transpalent, and can come in many colours such as colourless, white, red, grey, green, brown, or black. It can be massive, fibrous, granular or stalactitic, or form prismatic, rhombohedral or scalenohedral crystals.
It is the main mineral in limestones and marbles.

List of all minerals - Beryl

Mineral beryl by Orbital Joe via Flickr.com

Beryl is a silicate mineral, which can either be massive and in other earthy habits, or form beautiful crystals that, depending on their colour, have a name amongst gemstones. It can be red, white, colourless, green (emerald), blue (aquamarine), yellow (heliodor), and pink (morganite). It forms mostly in igneous rocks related to granites, but can also be found in schist.

List of all minerals - Olivine

Olivine ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Olivine is an iron and magnesium rich silicate mineral (like many other minerals, it is actually a solid solution, i. e. a group of minerals which vary in compositions between the iron-rich end member fayalite and the magnesium rich end member fosterite. They are most often green, but can also be brown, grey, white or yellow. It is found in mafic rocks.

List of all minerals - Garnet

Garnet ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Garnet is also a group of minerals such as grossular, almandine, spessartine and pyrope garnet. Spessartine is greenish, while the others are reddish in colour. They all have cubic crystals (pyrope's are rounded cubics), while grossular is transculent and the others are opaque. Almadine is the one that occurs in garnet schist.

List of all minerals - Corundum

Corundum ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Corundum is an aluminium oxide mineral, which, just like beryl, forms crystals that are known amongst gemstones, such as ruby (red), padparadscha (pink), and white, blue, orange, violet, green and yellow sapphire. But it can also be granular or massive, or mixed with magnetite (emery). Corundum is found in pegmatites, syenites, and gneiss.

List of all minerals - Zircon

Zircon stone ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com

Zircon also forms crystals known as gemstones, however they are all called zircons. They can be red, yellow, brown, green, grey or colourless. Zircon can form irregular grains, fibrous aggregates or prismatic crystals. It can be transparent or opaque. Zircon can contain traces of uranium and be slightly radioactive.