Natural Stone
is a collective name for thousands of different types of stone, found and quarried throughout the world.
The appearance and the characteristics of natural stone are determined by the manner in which the stone was formed: by rivers, by volcanoes, or by tectonic folding.
Each natural stone is unique, because no two places on earth have precisely the same geological composition or experience or precisely the same geological forces. This means that natural stone of the same type can also differ widely.
For commercial purposes, natural stone is divided into several large groups: granite, marble, limestone, basalt and slate are the most important.
Alongside this commercial classification, there is also an alternative scientific classification, which is divided into three categories: magmatic rock, which was created by the cooling of liquid magma; sedimentary stone, which was created by the compression of loose fragments of existing stone or by the deposition of limestone particles in water; and metamorphic rock, which was created by the transformation of existing magmatic or sedimentary rock under high temperature and/or pressure.