In this report, recent results from the HERA-B experiment on heavy flavour production in proton–nucleus interactions using a 920 GeV proton beam are presented. The topics include the production of the charmonium states J/ψ, ψ′ and χc, of the D-meson states D0, D±, D*, the open beauty production cross section ( production) and the ϒ production cross section. The nuclear dependence for the differential cross sections of charmonium production is discussed. The results are mainly preliminary. The report closes with a summary of the HERA-B search for pentaquark states with strangeness, which yielded quite stringent upper limits for the production of such states in hadronic environments.