Jose Fernando Bonaparte was born in 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, the son of an Italian sailor, and grew up in Mercedes, Buenos Aires Province. He began collecting fossils as a child and, without any formal paleontology training, eventually built a small museum in his hometown -- an unconventional start to what became one of the most productive careers in the field's history.[1]
Bonaparte spent most of his career as head of the Vertebrate Paleontology Division at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires, leading expeditions across Patagonia and northern Argentina that produced a remarkable run of discoveries: Carnotaurus, Amargasaurus, Noasaurus, and Abelisaurus among them. His 1985 description of Abelisaurus comahuensis revealed the Abelisauridae, a family of predatory dinosaurs found only in the former southern supercontinent Gondwana, entirely distinct from the tyrannosaurs and allosaurs of the north.[1][2]
According to paleontologist Peter Dodson, Bonaparte was "almost single-handedly" responsible for making Argentina one of the world's leading countries for dinosaur diversity. Fellow paleontologist Robert Bakker nicknamed him the "Master of the Mesozoic." Bonaparte died in 2020 in Mercedes, Buenos Aires Province, at age 91.[1]