Career
His work is in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Natural History. He has envisioned the Ardipithecus fossil remain nicknamed Ardi. From the late 1960s to spring 2014 the Smithsonian Institution displayed a scale dinosaur diorama, based on his artwork, which also included painted landscape scenes by Matternes himself.
His only known dinosaur illustrations were published in a National Geographic Society book in 1972.
Matternes resides in Fairfax, Virginia.