Dear Dr. Brachert,

After having obtained three reviews and based on your response I am pleased to tell you that we are in principle willing to publish your manuscript in Biogeosciences.
The reviewers’ criticisms largely focus on clarity, insufficient consideration of the previous literature, and over-interpretation of the results. I agree that a (brief) description of modern upwelling will help as does a more conservative interpretation of the results. Overall these are minor revisions and thus I invite you to submit a revised draft as soon as you can.

Best regards

Wolfgang Kiessling

Dear Thomas,

I am pleased to accept your paper for publication in Biogeosciences.
There are only a few technical issues to be corrected but I do not need to see the paper again.

p.1, l. 4 "also a species" should be "also a genus"
p. 6, l. 15: “We present the first calcification records from fossil corals”. I’d prefer to have such claims removed. There are many references of fossil coral growth rates (even from the Paleozoic) and although these are not strictly calcification rates, you should be more conservative here.
p. 7, l. 8: “differs“
p. 11, l. 5. t-test is usually used to compare means rather than evaluate variability. Rephrase!
p. 18, l. 6: “In the first” in the first what?
p. 27, l. 7-8: Suggestion: “Although Pliocene global average temperature was higher than today”
p. 29, l. 18: replace “speculate” with “suggest”
The conclusions are partly just a repetition of results, which is not good style. I would drop points 1-4 from the conclusions and elaborate on the remaining points (e.g., mention again what the different scenarios mean
You may want to acknowledge the reviewers.
Report of statistics: “p” in italics please. Furthermore p-values greater than 0.001 should be reported in full (rounded to three digits) rather than simply stating p < 0.05.
Please state upon first use what the ± after means refers to (e.g., one or two sigmas or standard errors)

Best regards

Wolfgang