As far back as Josef Moravec can remember, he was fascinated with the natural world, particularly the prehistoric world that he first glimpsed in museums dioramas and reconstructed fossils. It was a world uninhabited by humans, a world of unspoiled natural beauty when the great dinosaurs roamed the land and enormous sea creatures ruled the oceans. Inspired by visions of this land before time, Josef's vivid imagination and extraordinary artistic sensibility compelled him to draw and paint that long-ago world.

A kind of child prodigy, Josef began drawing dinosaurs, however rudimentary, at the age of three, and created his first oil painting when he was ten years old. Throughout his youth he learned and expand his talent. Although formally schooled in graphics, his artistic sensibilities led him to appreciate and study the "Old Masters" such as Leonardo da Vinci, E. Pieter Brugel and Rembrandt.

In the field of paleontology, Josef's most important influence has been Czech paleoartist Zdenek Burian, whom he admired and studied from a very young age. And like Burian, Josef has always strived to show us the prehistoric world as it really was, through the eyes of paleontologists. However, Josef Moravec's unique vision of prehistoric life is not simply the inspired imaginings of gifted artists but the thoughtful and intelligent result of his education in paleontology. And, as any serious artist of the human form must be knowledgeable of human anatomy, so a master paleoartist must understand the anatomy of his prehistoric models. Josef's tireless study of prehistoric animals, their history and original habitat nurtured his natural ability to translate skeletal remains, which are often incomplete, into fully realized depictions of these animals in their own time and place.
His love for this " lost world", combined with a dedicated attention to detail in his work, has allowed him to re-create these wondrous creatures and their habitat, to breathe life into his paintings, and to open for us a special window onto that world.

Today, Josef is one of the most respected artists of prehistoric animals and their environments, having won praise from Museums of Natural History throughout Europe and the United States. His paintings take us through the complete evolution of Earth Science time periods and epochs. Both the casual observer and the serious student can get a rare look at life on Earth before humans came along, from the Precambrian Era of 4.6 billions years ago to the Pleistocene Epoch 20,000 years ago.