The ground-breaking paper by Strauss et al. (2020), clearly demonstrates that salt tectonics play an even more significant role in the sedimentary and early deformational history of the Northern Calcareous Alps (NCA) than previously thought. Their pioneering subsidence analysis illuminates the importance of time diachronous salt evacuation and diapirism during the deposition of post-salt carbonate platform and time-equivalent inter-platform deeper water facies units. Their daring approach offers an intriguing explanation for creating accommodation space at far higher rates than possible by tectonic subsidence (crustal stretching plus thermal contraction during cooling) and relative sea level rise alone. Their new interpretations will literally fill several holes in our understanding of stratigraphy and tectonics in the NCA. A welcome early fall-out of their work are balanced cross sections where it was previously considered impossible to balance (Granado et al., 2019), thought provoking new depositional history plots (Fig. 6) and subsidence curves (Figs. 7, 8, 9), as well as fascinating and stimulating new interpretations for the growth and demise of Middle Triassic carbonate platforms in the NCA that may also apply to "other carbonate systems developed on salt basins" (Fig. 10).
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