Paleolake:
A paleolake is a lake that has existed in the past. Its origin can be dated back to an era when the climate and hydrological conditions of its area were different than today. These types of lakes may have already dried up or may be in the process of drying up, or have become filled with sediment, and are now significantly smaller in size than they were in the past. These paleolakes are known as former lakes and shrunken lakes. Depending on the manner of water loss, a shrunken lake may actually have divided into two or more smaller lakes. [WorldAtlas]
Or, as used below, palaeolake. Noted in “The other cradle of humanity: How Arabia shaped human evolution,” Michael Marshall, NewScientist (21 August 2021):
Since then, [Michael] Petraglia’s team and others have published many similar findings. “We now know there are about 10,000 palaeolakes of Arabia,” he says. “We’ve only been to a couple of hundred. On 70 per cent of those we found fossils or archaeology.” Hominins even lived in what is now the Rub’ al-Khali desert. At Mundafan Al-Buhayrah, a flat region that was once a lake, the team found stone tools dating from between 100,000 and 80,000 years ago.
