This special issue of Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments is devoted to studies of Jurassic terrestrial floras. The special issue Jurassic biodiversity and terrestrial environments includes nine contributions that investigate plant fossils and their spores and pollen from a range of localities across the globe that stratigraphically span the Jurassic (Fig. 1). These papers are a collective contribution to the IGCP project 632: Continental crises of the Jurassic: Major extinction events and environmental changes within lacustrine ecosystems.