Iron-manganese cutans are important carriers for Fe and Mn in yellow brown earth. They have been playing important roles in recording history of the environment and affecting the environment. This paper focuses on the mineral characteristics of typical iron-manganese cutans in yellow brown earth. Various mineralogical methods, such as ICP-AES, POM, ESEM, EDX, HRTEM, XRD, were applied to investigate iron-manganese oxides in cutan samples collected in Wuhan. The results show that iron-manganese cutans in yellow brown earth contain layering patterns, characterized successively by a high Mn layer, a high Mn & Fe layer, a high Fe layer, a high Fe & Mn layer and a high Fe layer, and Mn/Fe mass ratio decreases irregularly from the surface to the bottom. Iron-manganese cutans are mainly composed of nanoscaled Mn-(hydr)oxides and Fe-(oxy)hydroxide minerals composed of hollandite, birnessite, goethite, feitknechtite and vernadite, exhibiting diverse morphological features.