sometimes finding a mechanism or an empirical "hook" is the only thing that can loosen a theory's "protective belt..." you know?

It was called Continental Drift back then, Plate Tectonics was what was happening and when the finally had an explanation for continental drift, the name for the explanation is how the anticontinental drifters managed to change sides without too much embarassment.
Scientists don't like assertions where "and here is where the miracle occurs" is someplace in them, but the continent outlines and the fossils and the rock magnetism said that something was there to be explained and we didn't have an explanation till then.
There was a similar problem in evaporite deposits. Until Snowball Earth there was no statistically meaningful way you could explain the anhydrite problem, and there were about a dozen others. Salt deposit explantations ranged from the statistically impossible to the absurd. But it's still the received wisdom in evaporites.