Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmnh31d..06k&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #NH31D-06
Physics
[1160] Geochronology / Planetary And Lunar Geochronology, [5420] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Impact Phenomena, Cratering, [8136] Tectonophysics / Impact Phenomena
Scientific paper
One of the most popular explanations for the mass extinction of life at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago has been a single asteroid impact at Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. The discovery of a second smaller crater at Boltysh in the Ukraine with a similar age raised the possibility that a shower of asteroids or comets impacted Earth close to the K/Pg boundary. Similar terrestrial impact clusters have been detected 35, 370 and 470 Ma. New palynological, sedimentary and del13C evidence from the lowest 5 m of a new core of crater fill sediments in the Boltysh impact crater. Our analyses demonstrate that a post-impact flora formed on the ejecta layer of the Boltysh crater, was in turn devastated by the K/Pg events just a few hundred to a few thousand years later. We conclude that the Boltysh crater pre-dated Chicxulub by less than 2,000 years, a timescale that constrains the likely origin of the bodies that formed the two known craters. Sudden expulsions of asteroids from resonance bands in the asteroid belt shower Earth over many millions of years, but asteroids ejected from the J5:2 resonance band reach Earth within 50,000 to 1 million years, making it likely that two or more large craters would form within a few hundred to a few thousand years. This result implies that the K/Pg boundary events included at least two large asteroid impacts and that showers of asteroids are perhaps more prominent features of the long term terrestrial impact record than background random impacts. If asteroid showers also dominate the recent impact record, tracking and mapping the currently known asteroid families is likely to reduce the long term NEO hazard.
Gilmour Iain
Gurov Eugene
Jolley D.
Kelley Simon P.
Watson Judith J.
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