The Architect of Prehistory To look upon the works of Mauricio Antón Ortuzar is to witness a bridge being built across the vast, silent chasms of deep time. A master of paleoart, the Spanish illustrator does not merely paint animals; he resurrects them from the dust of the fossil record. Born in 1961 in Bilbao, Spain, Antón’s journey into the heart of the prehistoric world began not in a studio, but in the profound encounter with a skeleton. As a teenager living in Caracas, Venezuela, during the 1970s, he found himself captivated by the formidable remains of the Smilodon fatalis—the iconic s…