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The Cenozoic foreland fold and thrust belt of the external Dinarides along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea shows an overall NW-SE structural strike that changes to E-W in its central part, between Zadar and Mostar. This change is associated with a dextrally transpressive zone, named Split-Karlovac Fault. Segments of this fault straddle the Eo-Oligocene flexural foreland basin system of the external Dinarides. Two balanced cross-sections across the northern and southern segments of this transverse fault zone document highly contrasting styles of deformation and amount of shortening. The northern segment across Velebit Mountain is characterized by a triangle structure with a minimum shortening of 44 km. This triangle structure is formed by a set of thick-skinned top-SW thrust duplexes, topped by a thin-skinned passive top-NE roof backthrust. By contrast, the southern segment, traversing north of Split, shows a thin-skinned top-SW to top-S directed nappe stack, associated with a minimum shortening of 127 km and rooting into a basal detachment in the Paleozoic basement. To better understand parameters controlling these contrasting styles of deformation, we modelled the flexural response of the foreland lithosphere that provided the accommodation space for the Eocene to Oligocene syn-orogenic Promina Beds, a prevailingly carbonate-clastic and conglomerate-bearing sequence making a part of the foreland basin fill. Tectonic load exerted by the hinterland nappe stack was estimated using the two balanced cross-sections. Estimates of tectonic load allowed modelling the amount of flexural response that yielded depth and shape of the basin containing the Promina Beds. The best fitting modelling results provided additional confidence in the validity of the balanced cross-sections. It is shown that shortening in the two structurally contrasting segments of the thick-skinned thrust belt were contemporaneous with dextral strike-slip along the thick-skinned Split-Karlovac Fault and coeval with sedimentation of the Promina Beds. We propose that the Velebit triangle structure acted as a back-stop that prevented the propagation of the deformation front towards the SW. Instead shortening was transferred along the Split-Karlovac Fault into the southern transect, where deformation propagated towards the foreland along a successively shallowing stepped detachment. The contrasting style of Eo-Oligocene deformation probably resulted from the interplay of Permo-Triassic evaporites with the reactivation of inherited Middle Triassic normal faults to both sides of the transpressive zone. • Nappe stack vs. triangle structure in the external Dinarides fold and thrust belt. • Substantial along-strike difference of crustal shortening. • Effects of mechanically weak lithologies on the style of deformation. • Lithosphere deflection modelling in combination with balanced cross-sections. • Impacts of a transverse zone on the flexural foreland basin system geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]