The thrust forms the contact between older (Helvetic) Permo-Triassic rock layers of the Verrucano group and younger (external) Jurassic and Cretaceous limestones and Paleogene flysch and molasse.

For this reason the area in which the thrust is found was declared a geotope, a geologic UNESCO World Heritage Site, under the name "Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona."

In 2006, the Swiss government made a first proposal to declare the region World Heritage to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The region was declared a World Heritage Site in July 2008, because "the area displays an exceptional example of mountain building through continental collision and features excellent geological sections through tectonic thrust.

Escher von der Linth discovered that, contradictory to Steno's law of superposition, older rocks are on top of younger ones in certain outcrops in Glarus.

His son Arnold Escher von der Linth (1807–1872), the first professor in geology at the ETH at Zürich, mapped the structure in more detail and concluded that it could be a huge thrust.

However, Escher himself felt insecure about his idea and when he published his observations in 1866 he instead interpreted the Glarus thrust as two large overturned narrow anticlines.