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

Dinosaur skulls allow deciphering changes in diet

Protoceratopsids were small horned dinosaurs common in the Late Cretaceous rocks of the Gobi Desert. New analyses of morphometric data enable to estimate the ontogenetic changes occurring in the skull of these animals.

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Science News

At the beginning of the Cretaceous period, fish took over the ocean – the end of cephalopod domination

Seas in the Jurassic were much different from now. They were dominated by cephalopods related to squids and cuttlefish. Fish were much less abundant and diversified. Based on Jurassic otolith and statolith assemblages of Poland, Lithuania and the United Kingdom (and published data) we have reconstructed the structure of nekton community and the evolution of actinopterygians.

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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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Institute of Paleobiology has received financial support for research and educational projects from: