Kraglievich was born in 1886 on a ranch in the
Balcarce district of Buenos Aires Province. At the insistence of his parents, he moved to
Buenos Aires as a teenager, where he attended secondary school and later studied at the Faculty of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of the
University of Buenos Aires. In the final year of his engineering studies, he discovered the work of
Florentino Ameghino (1853–1911), a pioneer of vertebrate paleontology in Argentina, which inspired him to abandon engineering. Together with fellow student Juan C. de Ortuzar, he organized a ten-month expedition between 1912 and 1913 for geological and paleontological research through
Patagonia, exploring the
Province of Chubut and the northern part of
Santa Cruz Province. In 1914 he became an honorary collaborator at the
Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia in Buenos Aires, where he met researchers
Carlos Ameghino and
Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg. Meanwhile, he taught mathematics and natural sciences at several private secondary schools in Buenos Aires to support himself. Kraglievich's early scientific work focused mainly on South American
Xenarthra, later expanding to include
rodents,
bears,
dogs,
Astrapotheria,
Toxodontidae,
Typotheria,
Hegetotheriidae,
Macraucheniidae,
Entelodontidae, and the fossil
avifauna, including the giant predatory birds
Phorusrhacos and
Brontornis of the family
Phorusrhacidae. He also described the terror birds
Devincenzia pozzi and
Andalgalornis steulleti. In 1916, he published
Las doctrinas de Ameghino. Sobre una titulada réplica, a treatise defending Ameghino's views on
evolution and human origins. In 1918 he became a paid assistant, and in 1919 a technical assistant in the Paleontology Department. From 1919 to 1920 he worked with Carlos Ameghino and
Enrique de Carles in the Geology and
topography department of Buenos Aires Province, studying local geology and borehole samples. In 1921, Kraglievich served as deputy director of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. From 1925 to 1929, he headed the Paleontology Department, succeeding Carlos Ameghino. Between 1924 and 1925, he also worked at the
La Plata Museum, reorganizing and cataloguing its fossil collections, assigning over 11,000 inventory numbers corresponding to individual specimens. Kraglievich served for two consecutive terms as president of the
Sociedad Argentina de Ciencias Naturales. Due to disagreements with museum director
Martín Doello Jurado, he was forced to leave the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. In January 1931, he moved to
Uruguay and briefly worked at the
Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Uruguay in
Montevideo. During that time, he financed numerous fossil excavations and helped lay the foundations for the geological and paleontological study of the Uruguayan
Tertiary and
Quaternary. Among his major contributions are the descriptions of 28 new fossil families and subfamilies, more than 80 genera and subgenera, and 250 species and subspecies of fossil mammals and birds. His bibliography includes over 100 monographs and articles published in Argentina and abroad, notably in
Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires,
Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina,
Revista del Museo de La Plata,
Physis, and
El Hornero. His most significant works include
Contribución al conocimiento de los grandes cánidos extinguidos de Sud-América (1928),
Craneometría y clasificación de los cánidos sudamericanos... (1930),
Los más grandes carpinchos actuales y fósiles... (1930), and the posthumous
Manual de paleontología rioplatense: osteología comparada de los mamíferos (1937), completed with the help of his wife Francisca Kral and museum director
Garibaldi J. Devincenzi despite his paralysis. In 1940, the Buenos Aires provincial government published three volumes of Kraglievich's collected works. He died in March 1932 after a long illness in Buenos Aires, and was buried in the
Recoleta Cemetery. His son, Jorge Lucas Kraglievich (born 1928), also became a paleontologist. == Honors ==