Reply to comment by Eduardo Garzanti on ''When and where did India and Asia collide?''

] We thank Eduardo Garzanti for his comment[Garzanti, 2008] on our recent paper [Aitchison et al.,2007]. A traditional approach is to apply Occam’s razorand view our planet’s most significant orogenic zone as aresponse to closure of a one-ocean, two-continent conver-gence system. However, a vast body of new data has beenobtained in the decades following widespread acceptance ofthis conservative model by the scientific community. Wecontend that significant details are lost with this conven-tional view. Critically, it is now clear that the northernmargin of India experienced not one but two quite discretecollisions during the Paleogene.[