''Qarunavus'' is an extinct genus of mammals in the order

Ptolemaiida Ptolemaiida is a taxon of wolf-sized Afrotheria, afrothere mammals that lived in northern and eastern Africa during the Paleogene. The oldest fossils are from the latest Eocene strata of the Jebel Qatrani Formation, near the Fayum oasis in Egypt. ...

. A single species, ''Qarunavus meyeri'' is known from the

Lower Oligocene The Rupelian is, in the geologic timescale, the older of two ages or the lower of two stages of the Oligocene Epoch/Series. It spans the time between . It is preceded by the Priabonian Stage (part of the Eocene) and is followed by the Chattia ...

Jebel Qatrani Formation The Jebel Qatrani Formation (also Gebel Qatrani, Gabal Qatrani or Djebel Qatrani) is a geologic formation located in the Faiyum Governorate of central Egypt. It is exposed between the Jebel Qatrani escarpment and the Qasr el Sagha escarpment, nor ...

of modern-day Egypt. Described by Elwyn Simons & Philip Gingerich in 1974, the genus name is a combination of ''Qarun'', the Arabic term for

Lake Moeris Lake Moeris (, genitive Μοίριδος) was an ancient endorheic freshwater lake located in the Faiyum Oasis, southwest of Cairo, Egypt, which persists today at a fraction of its former size as the hypersaline Lake Qarun (Arabic: بركة ق� ...

, and -''

avus The ('Automobile traffic and training road'), known as AVUS (), is a public road in Berlin, Germany. Opened in 1921, it was also used as a motor racing circuit until 1998. Today, the AVUS forms the northern part of the Bundesautobahn 115. C ...

'', Latin for "ancestor". The specific epithet honors Grant E. Mayer of the

Yale Peabody Museum The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University (also known as the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History or the Yale Peabody Museum) is one of the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It ...

References

Oligocene mammals of Africa Fossil taxa described in 1974 Ptolemaiida Prehistoric placental genera {{Paleo-afrotheria-stub