Octávio Mateus is a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 dinosaur paleontologist and biologist

Biologist

A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...

 (graduated in Universidade de Évora). He received his PhD at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2005. He collaborates with Museu da Lourinhã

Museu da Lourinhã

Museu da Lourinhã is a museum in the town of Lourinhã, west Portugal. It was founded in 1984 by GEAL - Grupo de Etnologia e Arqueologia da Lourinhã ....

, known for their dinosaur collection.

Specialist in dinosaurs, he has studied Late Jurassic

Late Jurassic

The Late Jurassic is the third epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time from 161.2 ± 4.0 to 145.5 ± 4.0 million years ago , which is preserved in Upper Jurassic strata. In European lithostratigraphy, the name "Malm" indicates rocks of Late Jurassic age...

 dinosaurs of Portugal, publishing several scientific articles.

He has named new dinosaur species such as Lourinhanosaurus antunesi

Lourinhanosaurus

Lourinhanosaurus was a carnivorous theropod dinosaur genus that lived during the Late Jurassic Period . Its first remains were found at Peralta, near Lourinhã, Portugal in 1982, but were not described until 1998, by Portuguese paleontologist Octávio Mateus.Its type species is L...

(1998), Dinheirosaurus lourinhanensis

Dinheirosaurus

Dinheirosaurus is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur. It has been found in the upper section of the Late Jurassic strata of the Camadas de Alcobaça Formation located in central-western Portugal at Porto Dinheiro, Lourinhã...

, Tangvayosaurus hoffeti

Tangvayosaurus

Tangvayosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Aptian-Albian age Lower Cretaceous Grès Supérior Formation of Savannakhet, Laos...

(1999), Draconyx loureiroi

Draconyx

Draconyx is a genus of dinosaur from the Late Jurassic. It was an ornithopod which lived in what is now Portugal. It was found in Lourinhã, in 1991, and described by Octávio Mateus and Miguel Telles Antunes in 2001.-Etymology:...

(2001), Lusotitan atalaiensis

Lusotitan

Lusotitan is a genus of herbivorous brachiosaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period of Portugal.In 1947 by Manuel de Matos, collector of the Geological Survey of Portugal, fossils of a large sauropod were found in the Portuguese Lourinhã Formation dating to the Tithonian stage of the...

(2003), Europasaurus holgeri

Europasaurus

Europasaurus is a basal macronarian sauropod, a form of quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaur. It lived during the Late Jurassic of northern Germany, and has been identified as an example of insular dwarfism resulting from the isolation of a sauropod population on an island within the Lower Saxony...

(2006), and Allosaurus europaeus

Allosaurus

Allosaurus is a genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 150 million years ago during the late Jurassic period . The name Allosaurus means "different lizard". It is derived from the Greek /allos and /sauros...

(2006).

Since 1991 Octávio Mateus has organized dinosaur excavations in Portugal, as well as excavating in Laos (Asian Southeast) with the French team of the Paris Museum of Natural History, led by Prof. Philippe Taquet

Philippe Taquet

Philippe Taquet is a French paleontologist who specializes in dinosaur systematics of finds primarily in northern Africa.He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences since November 30, 2004...

. He has recently worked in Angola, where he discovered the first Angolan dinosaur in the scope of a project in the area of vertebrate paleontology of Angola.

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