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natural history page title
Identifying rocks, minerals and fossils

Introduction
What is a rock?
What is a mineral?
What is a fossil?
Rock, mineral or 
    fossil?

Rock key

Mineral key
    Unknown 
        mineral

    Dark mineral 
        key

    Biotite
    Pyrite
    Unknown 
        dark mineral

    Light mineral 
        key

    Calcite
    Quartz
    Unknown light 
        mineral


Fossil key
Helpful books

  
Unknown dark mineral

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image of almandine garnet

There are many hundreds of dark coloured minerals and it is likely that your specimen isn't one of the common ones featured in this key.
If you want to find out more about your mineral you could search the
Virtual Store which features a range of different minerals, or could do some research at your local library. You could also take your specimen to a local museum to compare it with their mineral collection.