Biography
Born in 1975 in Portugal, Dr. Octávio Mateus is a biologist (Bachelors from University of Évora) and a paleontologist (PhD from the New University of Lisbon, in 2005). He lives in Lourinhã, where he is engaged with the Museum of the Lourinhã, known for its important dinosaur collection and in the Centro de Estudos Geológicos of the New University of Lisbon.
As a dinosaur paleontologist, he has studied Late Jurassic dinosaurs of Portugal, publishing several scientific articles in national and international scientific journals, including the journal Nature.
He has baptized new dinosaur species as the Lourinhanosaurus antunesi (1998), Dinheirosaurus lourinhanensis (1999), Tangvayosaurus hoffeti (1999), Draconyx loureiroi (2001) , Lusotitan atalaiensis (2003), Europasaurus holgeri (2006), and Allosaurus europaeus  (2006).
Since 1991, Octávio Mateus has organized dinosaur excavations in Portugal, where he collected many dinosaurs and other vertebrates, including sauropods, theropods, stegosaurs, crocodiles, and turtles.
The call for adventures has taken him to excavations in other countries, such as Laos (Southeast Asia) with a French team from the Museum of Natural History in Paris, led by Prof. Philippe Taquet. More recently, he has worked in Angola, where he discovered the first dinosaur from that country, in the scope of a ambitious paleontology project on vertebrates of Angola, the PaleoAngola Project, with his colleagues from Angola, Southern Methodist University (USA) and Natuurhitorisch Museum in Maastricht (Netherlands).
He collaborates with diverse international scientific institutions, and is a member of the scientific council of the German foundation Verein zur Förderung der niedersächsischen Paläontologie.
His interest for dinosaurs has taken him to the United States, Brazil, Laos, Tunisia, Mozambique, Mongolia, Morocco, South Africa and Angola.
Since the age of four, Octávio has searched for dinosaur fossils with his parents, who were responsible for starting 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. That is why when asked how he started his career, Octávio claims to have been “born in a dinosaur nest”.

Topics of interest:

Paleontology of vertebrates, mainly dinosaurs.

Museology of natural history and paleontology.

Mechanisms of evolution and heterochrony.

Ontogeny and nanism in dinosaurs.

Late Jurassic Fauna

African paleontology, mainly Angola.

Global correlations in the Late Jurassic

Evolution and Darwinism