Dear authors,

thank you very much for providing a revised manuscript and responses to the reviewer's comments. I agree with the proposed revisions and estimate that the comments have been addressed and responded to sufficiently.

However, going through the manuscript I cam across a few technical points that should be addressed before the paper is published.

- The order of references in the list is not always correct. I found one example where the alphabetical order is broken, but there may other inconsistencies. Please check.

Barral, A., Gomez, B., Fourel, F., Daviero-Gomez, V., and Lécuyer, C.: CO2 and temperature decoupling at the million-year scale during the Cretaceous Greenhouse, Scientific Reports, 7, 8310, 10.1038/s41598-017- 08234-0, 2017.

Barker, S., Greaves, M., and Elderfield, H.: A study of cleaning procedures used for foraminiferal Mg/Ca paleothermometry, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 4, doi:10.1029/2003gc000559, 2003.

Barnet, J. S. K., Littler, K., Westerhold, T., Kroon, D., Leng, M. J., Bailey, I., Röhl, U., and Zachos, J. C.: A high-fidelity benthic stable isotope record of Late Cretaceous–early Eocene climate change and carbon- cycling, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 34, 672-691, 10.1029/2019pa003556, 2019.


- There are at least three different forms of doi references that should be harmonised: e.g.

'10.5194/cp-11-1313-2015'

'doi:10.1002/palo.20048'

'http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2009.12.049'

Please have a look at the entire reference list once more with view on these details.

Please also update the author's affiliations. I've noticed the following by chance, but there may be other corrections needed:

Peter K. Bijl
Margot J. Cramwinckel
Joost Frieling
Lucas Lourens
Appy Sluijs

--> Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands


Please go through the manuscript once more to improve on these technical points and other remaining issues.

Best greetings

Heiko Goelzer