Lü was born in 1965. He graduated from
Lanzhou University in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in
geology. He studied at the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1997 to 2000 and earned his master's degree. He subsequently went to the United States to study at the Department of Earth Sciences at the
Southern Methodist University, earning his Ph.D. in 2004. Lü began working for the
Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in July 2004, initially as a postdoctoral researcher, then as associate professor and eventually as professor and doctoral advisor. An expert on
Mesozoic reptiles such as dinosaurs and pterosaurs, Lü conducted field research and excavation in more than ten Chinese provinces including
Liaoning,
Henan, and
Xinjiang, as well as foreign countries such as Canada, the United States, Britain, Mongolia, South Korea, and Japan. He participated in many international cooperation projects including the
Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project of 1999, Sino-Japanese Silk Road Dinosaur Survey in 1992–1993, the Sino-Japanese-Mongolian Gobi Desert Dinosaur Survey (1995–1998), and the South Korea–Mongolia Plateau Dinosaur Survey (2006, 2008, and 2010). Lü suffered from
diabetes. On 9 October 2018, he died suddenly in Beijing, at the age of 53. A pterosaur genus
Luchibang was named after him. == Major discoveries ==