For over 70 years, the Roman Kozłowski Institute of Paleobiology has been conducting in-depth studies of the history of life on Earth. Every year, the Institute publishes dozens of peer-reviewed articles, organizes conferences, foreign expeditions and excavations in new paleontological sites. We educate PhD students, publish the best paleontological journal in Poland (Acta Palaeontologica Polonica) and popularize science.
The staff and laboratories are open to cooperation with other research centers and interdisciplinary projects. An essential part of our Institute is the Paleontological Collection, gathering the largest fossil collections in Poland (hundreds of thousands of specimens), partly exhibited in the Museum of Evolution.

News

Science News

First known free-living lithistid sponge

Lithistids, an informal grouping of demosponges, are sponges with skeletons built of articulated spicules. Typically they are found in deep waters, but off the Somali coast we discovered six species inhabiting sandy sea-bottom at a depth of 50 metres.

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Science News

An ichthyosaur skeleton hidden under paint

Ichthyosaurs are one of the symbols of the Mesozoic and, alongside whales, the best-adapted to a marine lifestyle amniotes. The Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale abounds in excellently preserved fossils, including ichthyosaurs. We present a specimen of Stenopterygius quadriscissus (Bad Boll, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) from the collection of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.

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Science News

A new plesiosaur from Holzmaden

Plesionectes longicollum is a new plesiosauroid taxon from the lower Toarcian (Lower Jurassic) Posidonia Shale of Holzmaden, Germany, based on a nearly complete skeleton discovered in 1978. It exhibits a distinctive combination of anatomical features, including an extraordinarily long neck.

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Science News

Rich fauna in the Upper Cretaceous of Romania

An outcrop in southern Transylvania displays Upper Cretaceous transitional sediments from a marine to brackish environment with terrestrial elements. An international research group (including three members of the Institute of Paleobiology) conducted a comprehensive faunal study of this outcrop and identified 102 taxa of organisms

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Science News

New fossils from Owadów-Brzezinki

For over a decade, intensive research have been conducted at Upper Jurassic (Tithonian) at the Owadów-Brzezinki palaeontological site. The latest paper on the faunal assemblage from this locality deals above all with insects – a brief interpretation of their taphonomy is provided, and the challenges faced during their search in the quarry are highlighted.

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Science News

Parasitic infestation in the crinoid fossil record

Early Devonian crinoids from Morocco, inhabiting the northern Gondwana shelf, are described. It was discovered that more than half of their stem fragments were colonized during host life by various epibionts.

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