Dear Marcel and others, this is a very interesting paper and I fully agree with the reviewers that it presents an important data set of great value for the community; it is well written and presented and should be published in Geochronology. However, two invited experts plus an additional comment have pointed out various points where there is some
ambiguity, details need a better explanation or have not been correctly
presented. Besides, they have made several suggestions for improvement or
clarification. In their reply, the authors have clarified most but not all of these
issues mentioning they have fixed this in a revised version. This discussion
is in many parts useful for the reader, and I would encourage the authors to
implement it as much as possible in the manuscript (or external data
depository).
I agree with most comments/explanations of the authors in discussion with
the reviewers and as well with most statements made in the manuscript, but I
recommend using careful language and clarifying critical issues, e.g. those express by Nick Roberts.
Similar as the reviewers, I am skeptical about using different ablation
conditions between RM and unknowns. The lab in Frankfurt, as an example, has
shown that it is possible routinely to use the same spot size, energy density, and
frequency between RM and unknowns (perhaps scarifying the spatial resolution
in some cases) despite of low or high U concentration. The concept of aspect ratios, as
applied in this study, is not common practice at all, and there is no
fundamental detail study that has validated it (if I am wrong, please cite
it).
The presented data is not entirely convincing; applied to ASH 15D with WC-1
as RM, the ages are 3-5% too young, and in case of JT, ages do not change in
the aspect ratio miss-match of 0.8 to 1.7 (due to higher uncertainty, but still its no validation…). Secondly, the authors claim due to different drill rates observed for dolomite (up to 1.6 aspect ratio miss match) and aragonite (1.9, n = 1!) a significant age
offsets of 4-8% for dolomite and even higher for aragonite. However, they
have not demonstrated it! Besides, the authors not demonstrated that
different drill rates using a fixed spot diameter (e.g., for WC-1) yielded
the same age offset as by varying both spot diameter and drill rate (see Figure
4). So they link two different observations, which can not simply be linked
without validation. I would be grateful if the authors could add something
to the text to make their case stronger. However, I am already happy when
they express it in a more careful language and mentioning that further
validation is needed
(Note, it should be „isochron“ and not „isochrone“ …)
So I would like to see a modified version of the manuscript before final
acceptance with the options to send in again to the reviewers.

Dear Marcel and others,
As already written, this is a very interesting, inspiring paper. Overall, I am satisfied with the responses to the reviewers and the changes that have been made.

Dear Marcel
thank you for resubmitting your revised manuscript. It is now acceptable for publication in its present form. Well done ! However, if I look at the figures on my computer screen, they are generally very poor. The lines are all very rough rather than smooth. Also the text/lettering is quite irregular. Please have a look at the proofs when you get them and if necessary submit high-resolution image. This paper deserves not only correct but als pretty figures.

Klaus Mezger
Editor