Antimicrobial drug self-medication occurs most often in eastern and southern Europe and least often in northern and western Europe.

Our study shows consistent associations between prescribed use and self-medication with antibiotics from leftovers, but has not been able to support the hypothesis that self-medication from other sources than leftovers is triggered by earlier prescribed use. Preventing leftovers may be one effective way of preventing self-medication. This can be achieved by ensuring that the amount dispensed corresponds to the amount prescribed, by educating patients and by making doctors aware that prescribing for minor ailments may increase the risk of self-medication for such ailments.

The Palaeocene ⁄ Eocene boundary (P ⁄ EB) and the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55.8 Ma) are defined stratigraphically based on carbon isotope ratios of various materials. Here, the position of the P ⁄ EB is refined in the terrestrial-lacustrine and swampy Vasterival section (Upper Normandy coast, France) by using carbon isotopes measured on dispersed organic matter (d 13 C org ). Moreover, nitrogen isotopes on dispersed organic matter (d 15 N org ) are, for the first time in the Palaeogene record, associated with carbon isotope and lithological data to constrain palaeoclimatic and environmental changes around the P ⁄ EB in a terrestrial environment. Humid-dry fluctuations before and during this key interval in Earth history are suggested.

The climate became warmer and more arid from the pre-Mesolithic/Mesolithic to the Meroitic period. The environmental conditions influenced the strategies of subsistence and, in particular, the changes occurring from the pre-Mesolithic to the Neolithic can be considered contemporaneous to the transition from hunting-gathering-fishing to cultivation-herding. Am J Phys Anthropol 160:498-518, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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