Octávio Mateus

Octávio Mateus graduated in Biology from Universidade de Évora and received his PhD in Paleontology from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is now assistent Professor of Paleontology at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

Since the age of four, Octávio Mateus has searched for dinosaur fossils with his parents co-founders of the Museum of Lourinhã, known for its important dinosaur collection. They raised Octávio in Lourinhã, an area rich in Late Jurassic dinosaurs and, very early in his career, Octávio excavated a dinosaur nest with them, finding embryos inside the eggs. Since 1991, Octávio Mateus has organized dinosaur excavations in Portugal, where he and the team collected many dinosaurs and other vertebrates, including sauropods, theropods, stegosaurs, crocodiles, and turtles.

One of his main scientific project is in Angola, where he discovered the first dinosaur from that country, in the scope of the PaleoAngola Project, with geologists and paleontologists from Angola, Southern Methodist University (USA) and Natuurhitorisch Museum in Maastricht (Netherlands). His interest for dinosaurs has taken him to the United States, Brazil, Greenland, Laos, Tunisia, Mozambique, Mongolia, Morocco, South Africa and Angola. Octávio published scientific articles, conferences proceedings, and book chapters that sum more than 100 publications since 1997.