Reply to the comment on "Orbitally forced climate and sea-level changes in the Paleoceanic Tethyan domain (marl–limestone alternations, Lower Kimmeridgian, SE France)" by S. Boulila, M. de Rafélis, L. A. Hinnov, S. Gardin, B. Galbrun, P.-Y. Collin [Palaeo

In their comment on our paper (Boulila S. et al. 2010 — Orbitally forced climate and sea-level changes in the Paleoceanic Tethyan domain, marl–limestone alternations, Lower Kimmeridgian, SE France, Palaeogeog. Palaeoclim. Palaeoecol., 292, 57–70), Mattioli and co-authors (E. Mattioli et al., Comment on "Orbitally forced climate and sea-level changes in the Paleoceanic Tethyan domain (marl–limestone alternations, Lower Kimmeridgian, SE France) " by S. Boulila, M. de Rafélis, L. A. Hinnov, S. Gardin, B. Galbrun, P.-Y. Collin [Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology 292 (2010) 57–70], Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, this issue) criticize our depositional model of Lower Kimmeridgian marl-limestone alternations in the Vocontian Basin (SE France) and contest the nannofossil contribution to the build-up of micritic limestones. The model that we proposed links maxima of orbitally forced insolation with high sea-level, weaker continental erosion, and reduced detrital input, and insolation minima to low sea-level, increasing erosion of detrital materials and their transport to the basin. This involves a competition between multiple variable fluxes, and is supported by a multi-proxy study (magnetic susceptibility, weight percent carbonate, manganese content coupled with cathodoluminescence analysis, oxygen and carbon stable isotopes, and calcareous nannofossil analysis) on a 8.5-m thick interval from a ~ 40 m-thick section at Châteauneuf-d'Oze (SE France). This differs substantially from previous models suggesting that detrital input to this part of the Vocontian Basin constitutes ‘background noise’, and that the main mechanism inducing the marl–limestone rhythms was orbitally forced carbonate mud export from the Jura Platform.