He is best remembered for his expeditions to Egypt, which discovered the first known remains of many extinct fossil reptiles, such as Aegyptosaurus, Tameryraptor and Spinosaurus.

Richard Markgraf was born in Přísečnice, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic) on 13 March 1869 and he became a bricklayer before joining one of the travelling Preßnitz music groups until he eventually ended up impoverished in Cairo, Egypt, working as a pianist in the Shepheard's Hotel.

[8] Markgraf stopped collecting upon the request of Stromer in April 1914, with the last known fossil that he found being the dinosaur Tameryraptor markgrafi.

[8] He then returned to Cairo to begin the process of shipping the fossils to Munich (which would not be completed until 1922), but the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914 halted this process, and because Markgraf would not be paid until the fossils reached Stromer in Germany, Markgraf would quickly lose his main source of income because his fossil collecting was reduced on British soil (he mainly collected in Egypt), leading him to fall back into poverty again.

[9] The Egyptian government refused to send the shipment to Munich as they viewed all German citizens as being "suspicious";[9] Markgraf wrote to the British and Egyptian authorities about the release of the fossils but they declined his request and Stromer did not receive the shipment until it arrived in Munich eight years later in 1922.