Boltysh crater

Boltysh is a meteor crater in Ukraine. It is 24 km in diameter and its age is estimated to be 65.17 ± 0.64 million years. The crater is not exposed to the surface.

The estimated age of the Boltysh crater is almost exactly the same as that of the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico. The Chicxulub impact is believed to have caused the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous era, which included the extinction of the dinosaurs. As well as Boltysh, the United Kingdom's Silverpit crater and several other craters around the world have estimated ages of about 65 million years, leading to the suggestion that the Earth was struck by multiple impactors at that time. The collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994 showed that such multiple impacts over a few days are possible.

External links

• Earth Impact Database