Dear Thomas,

I have read the manuscript several times, as well as the reviews.

On this basis, I am certain that the manuscript should be published; however, this should come after revisions.

The referees offer good comments that need to be addressed, of which you have done so partly in the responses. I offer additional commentary below, which also should be addressed.

I will tentatively accept the manuscript pending moderate revisions that address the comments.

Sincerely,

Gerald (Jerry) Dickens

****

My major comment comes as a triple whammy. Look carefully at Figure 5. It does not make sense, especially without discussion. First, the y-axis in panel A (d13C) should be reversed, so as to conform to previous figures and most literature. Far more crucially, the d13C records at Sites 702 and 1263 do not align. There are only three options: the stratigraphy at one or both sites is incorrect (which is not good for a paper mostly on stratigraphy), the d13C of surface waters in the south Atlantic during the middle Eocene diverged (which would be really interesting and worthy of comment), or the d13C of bulk sediment is not recording a primary signal (which then places serious doubts on the use of the records for tuning age models). This problem has to be addressed in a revised manuscript.

I offer a few additional comments.

-- Page 1666 --
Line 2: Needs rewording and comma “… reconstructions, high accuracy …”

Lines 3-5: Rewrite as the word accuracy becomes redundant and superfluous here.

Line 23 (and throughout): Avoid Latin abbreviations (such as “e.g.”) in the middle of text. This is sloppy writing.

-- Page 1679 --
Lines 21-24: This sentence in unintelligible to me, and although I can be quite stupid at times, I will suspect the same for many readers. I would add 1-2 sentences, so that these concepts are clearly explained to everyone.

-- Page 1680 --
Should be “… is the key to exploring …”

Dear Thomas and co-authors,

This is a good manuscript and almost ready to go.

The one minor problem concerns my commentary. I understand and appreciate your response; however, this really should be incorporated into the manuscript. The reason lies at the most basic level: there is an obvious issue that some readers will see and that deep-down demands explanation. One can choose to ignore such things, or nicely present them so our community gains insight through acknowledgment and good discussion. Your manuscript would benefit from the latter, even though not the primary purpose.

I would add a short Section 5.4 that encapsulates the issue and your response (maybe 2-3 paragraphs, of which much you have already written). Basically, you recognize and the issue, and offer several possible explanations. It might begin with something like "One might recognize an interesting aspect of aligning d13C curves at two sites ..." Obviously, I will not force you to include this, but only strongly recommend, because such inclusion strengthens the depth and breadth of the paper, and because many "classic" papers receive such an accolade for including precisely such components.

Jerry

The authors have produced a really good paper, and have addressed nicely all commentary.