As pointed out by the reviewer (and I fully agree with his major points), there are many issues, which have not been solved and the authors have failed though to convincingly explain on how the single spot analyses can be used to derive mean ages to derive age groups and to derive conclusions for the structural evolution of the Lepontine dome.

Dear authors,

we got a review of F. Brouwer, which is already the third round of this review process. The good news is that the reviewer suggests publication after minor revisions. The bad news is that the reviewer still thinks that a number of comments in the very thorough review of M Rahn (in version 3) have not been addressed. If you are of different opinion than the reviewer, you still have to explain why you disagree and why you are not considering a comment (otherwise the very thorough work of reviewers is really a waste of time). Furthermore the reviewer is disappointed by the quality of the English of the manuscript and recommends a thorough round of editing to improve its presentation.

All together this sounds more like "major" than "minor" revisions. I will not send it out for review again but I strongly encourage you to take all comments (in version 3 and 4!) very serious. I will carefully check your version 5 and still consider to reject the paper if the comments are not properly addressed.

Looking forward to you final submission, regards Bernhard Grasemann

Dear Authors,
based on the Topical Editor's report and overall assessment of the review process, I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in Solid Earth.

Many thanks for choosing Solid Earth.

Sincerely,

federico rossetti