The Boltysh impact structure: An early Danian impact event during recovery from the K-Pg mass extinction

Annemarie E Pickersgill; Darren F Mark; Martin R Lee; Simon P Kelley; David W Jolley

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abe6530

The Boltysh impact structure: An early Danian impact event during recovery from the K-Pg mass extinction

Sci Adv. 2021 Jun 18;7(25):eabe6530. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abe6530. Print 2021 Jun.

Authors

Annemarie E Pickersgill^{1

2}, Darren F Mark^{2

3}, Martin R Lee⁴, Simon P Kelley⁵, David W Jolley⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, UK. annemarie.pickersgill@glasgow.ac.uk.
² Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride, UK.
³ Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
⁴ School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, Gregory Building, Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, UK.
⁵ School of Earth and Environment, Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
⁶ Geology and Petroleum Geology, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK.

Abstract

Both the Chicxulub and Boltysh impact events are associated with the K-Pg boundary. While Chicxulub is firmly linked to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, the temporal relationship of the ~24-km-diameter Boltysh impact to these events is uncertain, although it is thought to have occurred 2 to 5 ka before the mass extinction. Here, we conduct the first direct geochronological comparison of Boltysh to the K-Pg boundary. Our ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar age of 65.39 ± 0.14/0.16 Ma shows that the impact occurred ~0.65 Ma after the mass extinction. At that time, the climate was recovering from the effects of the Chicxulub impact and Deccan trap flood volcanism. This age shows that Boltysh has a close temporal association with the Lower C29n hyperthermal recorded by global sediment archives and in the Boltysh crater lake sediments. The temporal coincidence raises the possibility that even a small impact event could disrupt recovery of the Earth system from catastrophic events.

Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).