Geological Chronicle
Situated on the northwestern edge of Mare Fecunditatis, Taruntius spans 57.32 kilometers in diameter and displays an unusual density of ghost craters and lava-flooded features in its vicinity, especially to the southwest. The crater was named for the ancient Roman philosopher, mathematician, and astrologer Lucius Tarutius Firmanus.
The outer rim is shallow but forms a veined, complex rampart in the nearby mare to the north and southwest, breached on the northwest by the small crater Cameron. Inside, the wall lacks terraces and encloses a worn, irregular concentric inner ring. Slender rilles run concentric to the rim across a relatively flat interior floor that also holds a low central peak complex, morphology characteristic of a floor-fractured crater possibly produced by an uplift of mare material beneath the interior.
A pair of faint dark patches sits on the floor south of the central peak and along the northern rim near Cameron, likely formed by deposits of volcanic ash from small vents. Taruntius also anchors a ray system reaching across more than 300 kilometers; while these rays led mappers to assign the formation to the Copernican System, that age assignment remains disputed.