Interactive comment on “ Comets , carbonaceous meteorites , and the origin of the biosphere ”

I want to thank Prof. Rozanov for his review of the manuscript and these insightful comments. As Prof. Rozanov is well aware the field of Bacterial Paleontology is still young and not yet thoroughly understood in spite of the many very important contributions of paleontologists who have carefully studied the extensive assemblages of bacterial fossils that are found in Phanerozoic, Proterozoic, and Archaean rocks all over the Earth. A review of the literature clearly reveals that the great majority of the validly accepted microfossils of bacteria are of the organisms that belong to the Cyanobacteriaceae. This is due in part to their great antiquity and the fact that they are often well preserved in the fossil record. It is also extremely important that many of them are large, complex, and highly differentiated filamentous forms that exhibit very distinctive