Octávio Mateus

Octávio Mateus (born in 1975) is a Portuguese dinosaur paleontologist and biologist (graduated in Universidade de Évora). He received his PhD at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2005. He collaborates with Museu da Lourinhã, known for the dinosaur collection.

Specialist in dinosaurs, he has studied Late Jurassic dinosaurs of Portugal, publishing several scientific articles.

He has baptized new dinosaur species such as Lourinhanosaurus antunesi (1998), Dinheirosaurus lourinhanensis (1999), Tangvayosaurus hoffeti (1999), Draconyx loureiroi (2001), Lusotitan atalaiensis (2003), Europasaurus holgeri (2006), Allosaurus europaeus (2006), and Miragaia longicollum (2009). Since 1991, Octávio Mateus organizes dinosaur excavations in Portugal, but he also excavated in Laos (Asian Southeast) with the French team of the Paris Museum of Natural History, led by Prof. Philippe Taquet. More recently he has been in Angola, where he discovered the first dinosaur of that country, in the scope of a project in the area of vertebrate paleontology of Angola.

He collaborates with diverse international scientific institutions, being the scientific council member of the German foundation Verein zur Förderung der niedersächsischen Paläontologie.