Octávio Mateus

Associated Professor     |     FCT- Universidade NOVA de Lisboa   |    Paleontology
Ph.D. in Paleontology (2005), Graduation in Biology (1998)

Biography
Born in 1975 in Portugal, Octávio Mateus is Associated Professor of Paleontology in the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia -Universidade Nova de Lisboa [NOVA University of Lisbon]. His education background is Biology (Graduated from University of Évora) and Paleontology (PhD from the Univ. Nova de Lisboa, in 2005).

His mainly interest is dinosaur paleontology, so he has studied Late Jurassic dinosaurs of Portugal, but also worked in other reptiles (mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, etc.).

Author of more than 200 scientific articles, conferences proceedings, and book chapters. He erected more than 30 new taxa to Science, as the Lourinhanosaurus antunesi (1998), Dinheirosaurus lourinhanensis (1999),Tangvayosaurus hoffeti (1999), Draconyx loureiroi (2001) , Lusotitan atalaiensis (2003), Europasaurus holgeri (2006), Allosaurus europaeus (2006), Diceratus (2008), Microceratus (2008), Prognathodon kianda (2008), Miragaia longicollum (2009), Angolachelys mbaxi (2010), Angolatitan adamastor (2011), Lusonectes sauvagei (2012), Torvosaurus gurneyi (2014), Zby atlanticus (2014), among others.

He lives in Lourinhã, where he is engaged with the Museum of the Lourinhã, known for its important dinosaur collection. Since 1991, Octávio Mateus has organized dinosaur bones, tracks and eggs excavations in Portugal. 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 a paleontology project on vertebrates of Angola, 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.

Since the age of four, Octávio has searched for dinosaur fossils with his parents co-founders of the Museum of Lourinhã. 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.