The Gosau Group (Turonian to Ypresian) of the Eastern Alps is a synorogenic wedge-top succession that accumulated in active depocenters in an oblique-convergent plate tectonic setting. Due to high morphological differentiation of depocenters by tectonism, the Gosau Group displays a wide range of facies as well as marked facies heteropy and thickness variations over short lateral distances. In the area of the locations Gosau and Russbach, the Hochmoos Formation along the SE basin margin near Gosauschmied comprises coastal to shallow-marine deposits and small rudist bioconstructions and was investigated by way of field mapping, profile descriptions, microfacies analysis, isotope measurements and assessment of fossil content.
Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) from 0.707485 (oldest) to 0.707549 (youngest) indicate a latest Santonian age, with the youngest parts of the Hochmoos Formation possibly extending into the Campanian. On the west side of the study area, the succession of lithologies and fossil content record transgression of a fan-delta to marginal-marine environment (lowstand to transgressive systems tract), followed by shallow neritic deposition (part of the transgressive systems tract) and, finally, by progradational stacking of limestone beds in the highstand systems tract, culminating in growth of rudist thickets in an inner shelf and partially protected ‘lagoonal’ milieu. Eventually, at the inception of the following falling stage systems tract, input of large clasts of Dachstein Limestone, quartz and chert record a recurrence of the subaqueous part of a fan-delta. On the east side of the study area, a preponderance of rudist-clastic limestones over a few rudist biostromes preserved