We invite the authors to submit a revised version of their manuscript which addresses the following broad points brought up (and answered) by the reviewer and author comments:

1. The revised version should acknowledge and include all responses to the comments of reviewers from the discussion phase.

The paper will undergo another review upon receipt of revised version.

The revised manuscript is suitable for publication, however there is one additional point I would like to point out regarding the Neotoma guidelines on their website:

...any use of Neotoma data should include the following or similar text in their acknowledgments: “Data were obtained from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database (http://www.neotomadb.org), and the work of the data contributors and the Neotoma community is gratefully acknowledged.”

Once this change is made to the acknowledgement section I will accept the manuscript for publication.