Rinchen Barsbold was born on 21 December 1935 in Mongolia. He trained as a paleontologist and geologist, joining the Institute of Geology within the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in Ulaanbaatar, where he spent most of his career studying the Mesozoic stratigraphy and fossil vertebrates of the Gobi Desert.[1]
Barsbold took part in and later led expeditions that produced much of the modern picture of Cretaceous dinosaur life in Mongolia, naming or co-naming numerous theropods -- including oviraptorosaurs and troodontids -- recovered from Gobi formations. Studying these fossils, he identified skeletal features shared with birds across multiple theropod lineages, an observation that became some of the earliest solid evidence that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs, years before the idea gained wide acceptance.[1]
Barsbold died on 28 August 2025, having spent roughly six decades documenting the dinosaur fauna of the Gobi Desert.[1]