The Boltysh impact
A second crater is punched into Ukraine 650,000 years after Chicxulub, during the recovery.
- When
- Known to
- ± 160 thousand years
- Era
- Paleocene, Cenozoic
The Boltysh structure in central Ukraine is a 24-kilometre crater dated to 65.39 million years ago, placing it several hundred thousand years after the Chicxulub impact rather than simultaneous with it, as had once been suspected. It is far too small to have caused a mass extinction, but it is well placed to record one: the crater lake filled with finely layered sediment that preserves a continuous, high-resolution record of climate and vegetation during the earliest Paleogene recovery, including a hyperthermal event picked up in its layers.