Field survey, satellite image interpretation, geological map interpretation, literature review, GPlates reconstruction and LA-ICP-MS U-Pb dating of synkinematic calcites demonstrate that ~E/W-shortening in eastern Oman was significant and related to oblique convergence of Arabia and India from 32.5 to 20 Ma. Approximately N/S-oriented compressive structures, WNW to NNW-striking sinistral faults and ~E/W-oriented normal faults characterize a major shear zone in the eastern Oman Mountains (Hajar Shear Zone, HSZ) and its wrench-fault assemblage within an area spanning ~250 km x ~50 km. More than 10,000 mostly NW-striking lineaments as deduced from satellite image interpretation and numerous faults/folds indicate that strain of the HSZ is widely distributed but concentrated along WNW to NNW-striking major faults/fault zones at the SW margin of the Saih Hatat Dome. These faults/fault zones represent reactivated basement faults. GPlates reconstructions reveal that N-drifting India rotated 8° counter-clockwise with respect to fixed Arabia from 32.5 to 20 Ma, leading to ~100-135 km E/W-convergence between both plates (minimum value). This convergence created the sinistral HSZ with a displacement of a few to several tens of kilometers. Independently from the GPlates time constraints, two U-Pb ages of synkinematic calcites, crystallized along faults during HSZ movement, yield compatible ages of 30.08 ±0.47 and 22.31 ±2.15 Ma (2 standard error). E/W-shortening also affected the northern Oman Mountains, creating the ~N/S-oriented Hagab Thrust in the Musandam Peninsula and the Jabal Hafit Anticline.

The western Tauern Window of the Eastern Alps constitutes a mature transpressive wrench zone generated by Oligocene-Miocene convergence between the Dolomites Indenter and the European foreland. As a major structural divide, it translates convergence-parallel north-south shortening into convergence-perpendicular eastward lateral extrusion. About 7000 foliation, lineation, fold-axis, axial-plane, shear-zone, and shear-band measurements at ~1800 sites detail the structural geometry and evolution during indentation and transpression, modeled by numerical and analogue-material experiments. The results outline the western Tauern Window as an orogen-scale zone of localized deformation, consisting of tight, upright folds, reactivated by a sinistral shear-zone network. It connects the Giudicarie Belt southwest of the indenter salient with the Salzach-Ennstal-Mariazell-Puchberg Fault (SEMP) in the northeast. This transpressive zone has a sigmoidal vortex geometry, decoupling the Ötztal Basement in the west from the extruding wedges of the Eastern Alps in the east. Shortening was successively absorbed by nappe stacking, upright folding, and dome formation and then maintained by transpressional shearing that led to lateral extrusion, probably promoted by a change in the lithospheric configuration. The western part of the SEMP likely rotated ≥20° clockwise around a pole approximately halfway along its entire length during the indentation.