We thank Drs. A. Etchecopar and P. Cheung from the Schlumberger-Riboud Product Center (France) for their pre-review of the manuscript and their general comments on the manuscript and the filtering techniques used. We also thank S. Primm and B. Tikoff (Department of Geology, University of Wisconsin, USA) for improvements to the English, as well as Gary Acton (Department of Geology, University of California, Davis, USA), Trevor Williams (Borehole Research Group, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, University of Columbia, USA), and Lorri Peters (IODP, Texas A&M University, USA) for their careful review of the manuscript. This research used data provided by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). ODP is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries under management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), Inc. Figures were drawn using the Generic Mapping Tools package developed by Wessel and Smith (1995).