Dear Authors,

Thank you for the revised version of the manuscript. In general I think you have made a very good attempt to address the comments of the two reviewers. Before accepting the article one outstanding issue needs to be addressed.

One of the main comments of reviewer 2 was focussed on your assessment of thermal maturity which they still feel requires some further consideration.

As you acknowledge, TEX86 can be significantly affected (e.g. result in lower SSTs) by changes in thermal maturity of organic matter (Schouten et al., 2004; 2013). One way to check for the influence of thermal maturity is by using the distribution of hopanes (a type of biomarker). You determine the hopane ratio in (only) two samples, which according to your results are thermally very immature (only the immature BB hopanes are found). Based on these two data points you argue that thermal maturity is constantly low throughout the section ("We only checked two samples because typically the degree of thermal maturation in a section like this will be similar") and hence TEX86 can be applied with confidence.

However, (and as highlighted in the original comments of the reviewer), this is directly contradicting previously published results from the same section (Blumenberg and Wiese, 2012). That study did detect the thermally more mature ab and ba hopanes. Together this suggests changes in thermal maturity between samples (from samples with only immature bb hopanes as measured and presented in your work to samples with significant amounts of the more mature ab hopanes as shown by Blumenberg and Wiese (2012). Based on the results of Blumenberg and Wiese (2012) it is difficult to judge whether the thermal maturity is significantly high enough to affect TEX86, but the reviewer requests that you should acknowledge 1) the Blumenberg and Wiese (2012) study that suggests higher thermal maturity in parts of the section, 2) indicate that thermal maturity is changing in the section and 3) that this might affect TEX86 (but as you do not want to measure the hopane distributions in all samples used for TEX86 it is impossible to know which samples might be affected).

It is important the readers are aware of this possible caveat.

Once the above has been considered and taken account of the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Many thanks,

Alan.