- journal_title：Geology
- Contributor：David Jolley ; Iain Gilmour ; Eugene Gurov ; Simon Kelley ; Jonathan Watson
- Publisher：Geological Society of America
- Date：2010-
- Format：text/html
- Language：en
- Identifier：10.1130/G31034.1
- journal_abbrev：Geology
- issn：0091-7613
- volume：38
- issue：9
- firstpage：835
- section：Articles
The end-Cretaceous mass extinction has been attributed by most to a single asteroid impact at Chicxulub on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. The discovery of a second smaller crater with a similar age at Boltysh in the Ukraine has raised the possibility that a shower of asteroids or comets impacted Earth close to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary. Here we present palynological and δ13C evidence from crater-fill sediments in the Boltysh impact crater. Our analyses demonstrate that a post-impact flora, formed on the ejecta layer, was in turn devastated by the K-Pg event. The sequence of floral recovery from the K-Pg event is directly comparable with that in middle North America. We conclude that the Boltysh crater predated Chicxulub by ∼2–5 k.y., a time scale that constrains the likely origin of the bodies that formed the two known K-Pg craters.