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Although Western Europe has yielded numerous Jurassic turtle taxa, several represented by cranial material or complete skeletons, the fossil record of the Jurassic turtles remains scarce to the north and east from Germany. Although some Late Jurassic testudinates were historically described from Poland, they were, thus far, represented by fragmentary remains that never were properly figured or described in detail. Therefore, very little is known about the mid‐Mesozoic diversity of turtles in that region of the continent. A new pancryptodiran turtle genus and species, Owadowia borsukbialynickae, is described from the uppermost Jurassic (Tithonian, ca. 148 Ma) carbonate sediments of the Kcynia Formation in Owadów‐Brzezinki Quarry, near Tomaszów Mazowiecki in central Poland. The lower jaw morphology and palaeoecological setting inhabited by the new genus and species, together with the trophic relationships of the Jurassic pancryptodiran turtles, are discussed in an attempt to determine the potential range of mode of life of O. borsukbialynickae. We propose that the new specimen belongs to a new durophagous pancryptodiran turtle taxon. O. borsukbialynickae might have spent considerable time in the marine environment and specialized on eating hard‐shelled invertebrates like bivalves and decapod crustaceans, common to that setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we briefly report on the discovery of a new Fossil-Lagerstätte locality, Owadów-Brzezinki quarry (central Poland), which exposes Late Jurassic (Late Tithonian) carbonate sediments with an extremely fossiliferous horizon of lithographic-type limestones. Numerous specimens of horseshoe crabs were found in association with an enormously rich assemblage of the soft-shelled bivalves Corbulomima obscura and Mesosaccella sp., the remains of various fishes and marine reptiles, rare ammonites, crustaceans, land insects and pterosaurs. The uniqueness of this new locality lies in its very close stratigraphical relationship to one of the most famous Fossil-Lagerstätte localities in the world-Solnhofen, in southern Germany, with approximately 2 Ma separating them. Marine and terrestrial creatures lived and died during the Late Jurassic both at Solnhofen (Hybonotum Zone) and in another area (Owadów-Brzezinki quarry, Zarajskensis Subzone), under closely related environmental conditions. The small palaeogeographical distance separating these two locations enables, for the first time, an effective palaeobiological test of the pace of evolutionary speciation amongst different groups of organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]