Mauricio Antón Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Between 2009-2010 he contributed to the “Extreme Mammals” exposition of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

Since the year 2004, he has been working in collaboration with “The Fly Factory” animation studios in the application of 3D modeling and animation to the reconstruction of past life. In 2006, he won the Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for the best scientific illustration from the SVP (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology). In 2009, he was invited by the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology to visit their Beijing Museum and also the new Museum and fossil sites at Hezheng in central China, where he made first-hand observations of undescribed carnivore fossils. A museum he contributed major illustrations to in Bolnisi, Georgia, was nominated for the European Museum Awards in 2022.

As a teenager in Caracas (Venezuela) in the 1970s, Antón became fascinated with the skeleton of the saber-tooth cat Smilodon fatalis on exhibition at the local museum. Ever since, he has been working and improving his techniques to bring fossils alive, being especially interested in felids, hominids and other vertebrates. As he puts it in one of his books (El secreto de los fósiles) “It is the responsibility of the scientific paleo-illustrator to make sure that his images rigorously transmit the knowledge that the paleontologists have gathered from specific extinct species.”

Mauricio Antón Ortuzar (born 1961 in Bilbao, Spain) is a paleoartist and illustrator specialized in the scientific reconstruction of extinct life, well known for his influential paintings of hominids, extinct carnivores and other vertebrate fossil groups. His works illustrate a great number of books, scientific papers, private collections and museums in many parts of the world. He currently works in association with the Natural Science Museum in Madrid.