Interactive comment on “Evaluation of isotopes and elements in planktonic foraminifera from the Mediterranean Sea as recorders of seawater oxygen isotopes and salinity” by Linda K. Dämmer et al

The authors present a comprehensive regional dataset of trace element and stable oxygen isotope data measured on foraminifera collected from plankton samples with rich contextual physical and chemical data. The analyses were carried out to test to what degree the strong salinity (or seawater oxygen isotope) gradient in the Mediterranean could have been reconstructed from shell chemistry. The results are sobering, which I believe is not to be taken negatively but as an extremely important result, confirming the growing body of evidence that there is something we fundamentally do not C1