Reply to comments by C. Labails and W. Roest on ‘Breakup of Pangaea and plate kinematics of the central Atlantic and Atlas regions’

In their comment, Labails and Roest have raised several points against the kinematic model of Schettino and Turco for the central Atlantic region, which requires the existence of an independent Moroccan Plate during the Oligocene and the early Miocene. We thank these authors for giving us the opportunity to clarify some controversial points, but disagree with most of their objections and show that they are based either on a different interpretation of existing data or a distortion of the facts presented by Schettino and Turco.