Mauricio Antón | |
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 Mauricio Antón en enero de 2019 | |
| Born | 1961  Bilbao |
| Occupation | Illustrator |
| Employer |
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| Website | http://www.mauricioanton.wordpress.com |
Mauricio Antón Ortuzar (born 1961 inBilbao,Spain) is a Spanishpaleoartist,vertebrate paleontologist, andillustrator.[1] As a paleontologist specialising incarnivoran mammals, he has written extensively aboutsabertooth cats, as well as other groups likehyenas andamphicyonids. As a paleoartist and illustrator, he has created numerous illustrations of prehistoric life illustrating carnivorans as well as other animals (typically mammals),[1] andarchaic humans.[2] Antón is one of the most widely known and influential contemporary paleoartists.[3]
As a teenager inCaracas (Venezuela) in the 1970s, Antón became fascinated with the skeleton of thesaber-tooth catSmilodon fatalis on exhibition at the local museum.[4] Ever since, he has been working and improving his techniques to bringfossils alive, being especially interested infelids,hominids and othervertebrates. As he puts it in one of his books (El secreto de los fósiles)[4] “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 specificextinct species.”
To do this he gathers data fromextant species, travelling the world extensively, working hands on withfossils, dissectingspecimens donated by zoos, researching extinct species with specialists and using extant ecosystems as a basis for the reconstruction of past ones. He has been an advisor onpaleobiology,biomechanics,animal locomotion, andhabitats of extinctvertebrates for various media (BBC,National Geographic Society,Natural History,Discovery Channel, etc.). He has benefited from the influences ofpaleoart masters such asCharles R. Knight,Rudolph Zallinger,Zdenek Burian,Jay Matternes and others from whom he not only recognizes the technological advances but also the conceptual progress they made.
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Since the year 2004, he has been working in collaboration with "The Fly Factory"animation studios[5] in the application of3D modeling andanimation to the reconstruction of past life. In 2006, he won theLanzendorfPaleoArt Prize for the best scientific illustration from the SVP (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology).[6] In 2009, he was invited by the ChineseInstitute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology[7] to visit theirBeijing Museum and also the new Museum andfossil sites atHezheng in centralChina, where he made first-hand observations of undescribedcarnivorefossils. A museum he contributed major illustrations to inBolnisi,Georgia, was nominated for the European Museum Awards in 2022.[8]
Between 2009-2010 he contributed to the "Extreme Mammals" exposition[9] of theAmerican Museum of Natural History, New York.
In recent years, Antón is leading art safaris to NorthernBotswana under the title "Drawing the Big Cats", sharing first-hand sightings and his experience in studying the anatomy and evolution of felids with artists from all around the world.
Among his most well known books are:
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