Professor at the UCM. Director of the UCM-ISCII Centre on Evolution and Human Behaviour. Visiting Lecturer of the Department of Anthropology at the University College of London.

On 8 April, 1993, he featured in the journal Nature for the article on the discovery, in 1992, of the most complete human cranium in the fossil record of humanity, cranium number 5, a skull of Homo heidelbergensis.

Member, since 1982, of the Research Team of the Pleistocene Sites of the Atapuerca Mountains (Burgos, Spain) under the direction of Emiliano Aguirre Enríquez and, since 1991, co-director together with José María Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell Roura of the Team which was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research in 1997 and the Castilla y León Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 1997.

On 23 July, 2008, he was awarded the "Antonio de Sancha" prize, awarded by the Editors Association of Madrid, for his defence of culture through scientific dissemination.

On 30 April, 2010 he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Burgos.

The findings of Atapuerca have revealed new data about the first humans that inhabited Europe. This contrasts with the secrecy around the excavations of Orce (Granada, Spain), where human utensils before those of Atapuerca were found.

He is a member of the Museum of Man in Paris, of the International Association for the Study of Human Palaeontology, Vice Chairman of the Human Palaeontology and Palaeontology Committee of the INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) and has been a lecturer at universities in London, Cambridge, Zurich, Rome, Arizona, Philadelphia, Berkeley, New York, Tel Aviv,...