Perito Moreno has been credited as one of the most influential figures in the Argentine incorporation of large parts of Patagonia and its subsequent development.

He shared his spare time with his father searching for artifacts and fossils and, at age 14, created a homemade museum of his extensive collections.

[1] In 1880, Moreno went to France, where he spoke at a meeting of the Anthropology Society of Paris, discussing two prehistoric skulls he had unearthed in Río Negro territory.

The scholar Jens Andermann has studied how Moreno's collection of artifacts at these two museums helped establish Argentine history, and the government's claim to its territory.

[5] In 1902 Moreno was appointed Perito (a technical specialist or expert), in which capacity he disproved Chilean claims to the continental divide in the Southern Cone.

[citation needed] In 1903, Moreno donated some of the land previously given to him in order to establish the Nahuel Huapi National Park.

In a letter dated 3 November 1903 to the Minister of Agriculture Wenceslao Escalante, Moreno justified his donation, among other things, by comparing it with the establishment of national parks in the USA.

[6] He was appointed assistant director of the National Education Council in 1911 and helped secure funding for the Bernasconi Institute, a landmark primary school built in Buenos Aires.

In later years Moreno responded to political developments in South America at the time of World War I by joining the reactionary Argentine Patriotic League shortly before his death in 1919.