General comments

This is an interesting palynological analysis applied to the Aptian (Cretaceous) paleoclimatic interpretation of northern Brazil, supported by previous taxonomic and botanical affinity studies mainly carried out in Brazil, as well as paleoenvironmental and climatic interpretations of the wells.

It is recommended to improve the writing in English and correct errors, especially those parts marked with color in the attached file. Review spelling mistakes of some author´s names in Appendix 1 (e.g. valid Potonié)

My leading suggestions related to partially reorganizing the information of some parts of the text and making clarifications to improve its understanding. For this, see the details below and the balloons indicated along the text in the attached pdf file.

The manuscript has adequate illustrations and citations.

Summary of main comments

 Lines 67…: please clarify the meaning of "relationships ..." in terms of interpreting paleoclimate changes.

Possibly, it can be improved by rewriting this part with the following long sentence and avoiding repetitions

What do you mean by "indicator species"?

Try rewriting the sentence to make clear the purpose of those "selected taxa"

("diagnostic taxa" or "proxy-taxa" or "sensitive climatic taxa")

Line 99 up to the end of item 3: It is not clear whether these phases and the supersequences mentioned herein resulted from this study or previous one/ones, please clarify or cite at the beginning the corresponding refs.

Once again, it is not clear if this part /item is all concerning Milani et al. or if there are things related to the present study

Item 4.2: Is the CENPES the repository of the samples?

Which is the acronym of the collection?

Line 168: please clarify, are these conditions referring to the interpretation given to sample levels of wells? Who has done this part? please, cite references

The manuscript “late Aptian paleoclimate reconstruction of Brazilian equatorial margin: inferences from palynology” is an interesting work for publishing in Climate of the Past. However, before publication authors have to revise various aspects since this paper needs some changes and additions. In addition, the discussion of this work must enrich. Authors have to attain to define and concrete the possible climate of the NW Brazilian late Aptian not only considering the evaporitic phases.

• My first consideration deals with the title of this manuscript “paleoclimate reconstruction”. After read the work, authors do not really inform nor describe the climate characteristics of the Brazilian late Aptian type: tropical (equatorial??), subtropical, temperate, dry, rainy, with rains only in a particular season, etc?? They only consider the variation of five bioclimatic groups, which built from group taxa according their botanical affinity. These affinities considered comparing the identified palynological taxa from similar found in recent floras. Concretely, authors mentioned the literature of Dino (1994), Carvalho (2004), Souza-Lima and Silva (2018) and Jansonius et al. (1976-1996). However, they do not consider the “Sporomorph Ecogroup Model” of Abbink et al (2004) nor other studies carried on the northeastern Gondwana (Boukhamsin et al., 2023). These works indicate that the Araucariaceae are mainly linked to coastal environments being not frequent in uplands, that Cheirolepidiaceae could inhabit different environments, and that several Anemiacean spores were produced by ferns of Ruffordia type indicatives of savannas (Mohr et al., 2015). Considering the works that I suggest, authors have to revised Table 2, and should also reconsider and discuss the five bioclimatic groups and the validity of the data from the Table 3.
• Together the miospores, do the studied samples include dinoflagellates cyst, acritarchs, Tasmanaceae or foraminifera test lining? Are the studied samples marine influenced? Please, briefly explain.
• The IndVal index is not well explained. I would greatly appreciate a longer explanation considering the meaning of “specify” (line 198) and “fidelity” (line 199).
• Pteridosperms are truly gymnosperms (see line 209)
• The information of lines 214–218 is not a result. It must be moved to the chapter of methods.
• Line 236: “trilete psilate” … spores??
• In my opinion, the Figs. 3–8 are not useful because their data can be found in Fig. 9. I would move these figures to an appendix as supplementary material. In addition, the samples of each well must included in the diagrams.
• Line 286: The dendrogram is showed in Fig. 9 not in Fig. 8.
• On the one hand, the dendrogram of Fig. 9 differentiate-well the Bragança Fm. to the Codó Fm. On the other hand, the dendrogram does not reflect the transition between the pre-evaporitic phase to the evaporitic one. Please, explain these stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental aspects.
• This work needs wider explanation about the significate of a pre-evaporitic, evaporitic and post-evaporitic phases, since the description of climatic phases is based on the climate evolution during these three phases.
• Line 351. Please, revise the age of Santos et al. (2022) considering the reference in line 546.
• Line 360… “with sections in the Espiritu Santo Basin, located much farther south (at 20˚S)”. Be careful. According to the Fig. 11B, the Espiritu Santo Basin is between 20˚-25˚
• Line 399-401. “Considering the distribution curves of bioclimatic groups, as well as the indicator species (IndVal) and diversity, a clear upward trend toward increased humidity was observed”. However, climate was still arid/semiarid (xerophytes dominated)!! The same with respect the post evaporitic phase (lines 408-410). Please, could you explain more accurately these conclusions?
• Lines 368 and 407. “Afropollis spp. as an indicator species, indicated some periods of humidity”. Please, explain this subject considering the paper of Carvalho et al. (2022).
• Authors have to revise the latin names of different species such as “Callialasporites dampiere” in the caption of the Plate 5 and “Arecipites microfovolatus”, in the caption of the Plate 9.
• In Figure 1, please, provide a small map of the NW Brazil where will indicate the studied area.
• In Figure 11B, could you put the same colour to the dots representing the Espiritu Santo well? Likewise, authors have to indicate the meaning of the green and yellow colours either in the figure or in the footnotes.
• In the Table 2, please, revise the names of the taxa (e.g., “Granulatusporites”) and the botanical affinities (e.g., “Schzaeales”). In addition, Eucommiidites has to be related to the extinct family Erdtmanithecales and not to Gnetales (Friis et al. 2011).

References:

Abbink, O. A. et al. (2004). A sporomorph ecogroup model for the Northwest European Jurassic - Lower Cretaceous: concepts and framework. Geologie en Mijnbouw 83(1): 17-38.

Boukhamsin, H. et al. (2023). Early Cretaceous angiosperm radiation in northeastern Gondwana: Insights from island biogeography theory. Earth-Science Reviews, 242: 104454.

Friis et al. (2011). Early flowers and Angiosperm Evolution. Cambridge University Press.

Mohr, B. A. R. et al. (2015). Ruffordia goeppertii (Schizaeales, Anemiaceae) - A common fern from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation of northeast Brazil. Cretaceous Research 54: 17-26.