Stable isotope and calcareous nannofossil assemblage record of the late  Paleocene and early Eocene (Cicogna section)

Agnini, Claudia; Spofforth, David J. A.; Dickens, Gerald R.; Rio, Domenico; Pälike, Heiko; Backman, Jan; Muttoni, Giovanni; Dallanave, Edoardo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-883-2016

Articles | Volume 12, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-883-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Climatic and biotic events of the Paleogene

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-883-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 4

Research article

|

11 Apr 2016

Research article |

| 11 Apr 2016

Stable isotope and calcareous nannofossil assemblage record of the late Paleocene and early Eocene (Cicogna section)

Claudia Agnini, David J. A. Spofforth, Gerald R. Dickens, Domenico Rio, Heiko Pälike, Jan Backman, Giovanni Muttoni, and Edoardo Dallanave

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Apr 2016)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C2324: 'Comments to Agnini et al. paper', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Nov 2015
RC C2562: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 Dec 2015
AC C2777: 'Response to Reviewer#1', Claudia Agnini, 29 Dec 2015
AC C2783: 'A riposte to an unbalanced thrust by an unskilled poseur', Claudia Agnini, 29 Dec 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (11 Jan 2016) by Yves Godderis

Dear authors,

First of all, thanks for submitting your work to Climate of the Past. Your submission has been seen by two reviewers. As you know, their opinion is rather contrasted.

Based on those reports and on my own careful reading, I think that your work is an important contribution to the understanding of the Paleocene-Eocene environments, and it clearly deserves publication in Clim. Past. The most important results are probably the length of your record, largely exceeding the PETM event and giving insight into the long term evolution of the carbon cycle, prior and after this major event. Second, the coupling between the biodiversity of calcareous plankton and the time evolution of the d13C opens important research perspectives.

This said, several points have been raised by the reviewers, which you should consider carefully in the revised version (major points)

1) I agree with rev 2 that the title is somewhat misleading. There is still a big jump between the biodiversity and isotopic record on the one side, and the carbon cycle evolution on the other. There is no doubt that you present a key contribution, but I would slightly modify the title as following : Stable isotope and calcareous nannofossil assemblage record of the late Paleocene and early Eocene (Cicogna section).

2) The rev 1 suggests that the PCA method might be not well appropriated. This is an important point. In your answer, you did mention this point, but the reason why you finally decided to keep PCA instead of NMDS is not clearly explain (‘after thought, …’). Both methods should be implemented in the revised version, to avoid misinterpretation of your results.

3) The last point is related to the terrigenous fraction. The terrigenous fraction fluctuates from 22 to 95 %. Surprisingly, you mention that this could produce ”some distortions” in the signal. This seems to be underestimated. This point should be carefully considered and extensively discussed in the revised version.

Regarding the other points, which I consider as minor, I encourage you to answer as far as possible (you already did it in your answer to the reviewers).

If you have any question, do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Best regards.

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AR by Claudia Agnini on behalf of the Authors (02 Feb 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (11 Mar 2016) by Yves Godderis

AR by Claudia Agnini on behalf of the Authors (14 Mar 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (29 Mar 2016) by Yves Godderis

AR by Claudia Agnini on behalf of the Authors (29 Mar 2016) Manuscript

Short summary

In this paper we present records of stable C and O isotopes, CaCO₃ content, and changes in calcareous nannofossil assemblages in a upper Paleocene-lower Eocene rocks now exposed in northeast Italy. Modifications of nannoplankton assemblages and carbon isotopes are strictly linked one to each other and always display the same ranking and spacing. The integration of this two data sets represents a significative improvement in our capacity to correlate different sections at a very high resolution.