Many of the improvements in Marigo et al. (1999) TP-AGB tracks were already introduced by Groenewegen & de Jong (1993, 1994a-c), who computed extended sets of tracks and performed population synthesis of resolved AGB stellar populations. Groenewegen & de Jong, however, do not provide theoretical isochrones from their tracks.

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Marigo et al. (2003a) also computed isochrones containing essentially the same kind of TP-AGB tracks as in Cioni et al. (2006), but for a more limited range of metallicities, and for exploratory choices of model parameters. These isochrones were provided a few times upon request, and were superseded first by Cioni et al.'s and now by our new isochrones.

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... mixtures

These jumps in $T_{\rm eff}$ can be appreciated in Fig. 1, at the points where the TP-AGB phase begins (i.e., in passing from green to blue lines).

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... stars

The behaviour of $\Delta M^{\rm RGB}$ as a function of age can be appreciated in Fig. 6 of Girardi (1999), top panel.

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... 5)

In this paper, the surface gravity g is expressed in cgs units.

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... T dwarfs

Although brown dwarfs are not the subject of this paper, the tables of bolometric corrections include these objects. More details can be found in the original paper by Allard et al. (and to a smaller extent also Girardi et al. 2002).

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... seed

Following Ferrarotti & Gail (2006), with seed or key element we denote the least abundant element among those required to form the dust species under consideration; e.g., Si is the seed element of the silicate compounds in O-rich stars.

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... stars

The use of $\Delta{\rm BC}(\tau)$ ensures that any residual difference in the zero-points between the G06 magnitudes, and those used in our new isochrones, will be erased.

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...1986)

The dust model by Rowan-Robinson et al. (1986) is based on observations of circumstellar dust shells around late-type C- and M-type stars that appear to require absorption efficiencies decreasing as $\lambda^{-1}$ in the far-IR. This wavelength dependence is ascribed to grains with a disordered, damaged or amorphous structure. See the original paper for more details.

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... metallicities

Note that the bulk of M giants in the Magellanic Clouds are of spectral types earlier than M 4, and in general, much hotter than the typical M giants in the Milky Way. A handful of cool M giants and supergiants of spectral type later than M 6 is also known in the Magellanic Clouds (e.g., Groenewegen & Blommaert 1998; van Loon et al. 1998, 2005). In order to explain them, and also the more common giants of spectral type later than M 8 observed in the solar neighbourhood (with $T_{\rm eff}$ as small as 2400 K, see Fluks et al. 1994), our atmosphere models require super-solar metallicities.

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...2007)

The S³MC data, originally in flux units, have been converted to magnitudes using the zero-points from Cohen et al. (2003) for $JH\mbox{$K_{\rm s}$ }$ and from Bolatto et al. (2007) for Spitzer pass-bands.

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... sample

Isochrones in this age range were taken from Bertelli et al. (1994).

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...2007b)

http://trilegal.ster.kuleuven.be/ or http://stev.oapd.inaf.it/trilegal

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...2005)

http://adlibitum.oat.ts.astro.it/silva/default.html or http://web.oapd.inaf.it/granato/grasil/grasil.html

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