Lawrence Morris Lambe was born on August 27, 1863, in Montréal, Quebec, the son of William Busby Lambe (1826-1905), a prominent Montreal lawyer and painter.

He was a Canadian geologist, paleontologist, ecologist, and author. He studied at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario (1880–1883). He worked for the Geological Survey of Canada. His published work, describing the diverse and plentiful dinosaur discoveries from the fossil beds in Alberta, brought dinosaurs into the public eye and helped usher in the Golden Age of Dinosaurs in the province. During this period, between the 1880s and World War I, dinosaur hunters from all over the world converged on Alberta. In 1902, Lambe described Canada's first dinosaur finds, various species of Monoclonius. In 1917, he created the genus Edmontosaurus. Lambeosaurus, a well-known hadrosaur was named after him as a tribute, in 1923. In addition to paleontology, Lambe discovered a number of invertebrate species ranging from Canada to the Pacific Northwest. He published numerous articles and books related to his discoveries, e.g., several "Bibliography of Canadian Zoology" editions, “Sponges From the Atlantic Coast of Canada” (1896), and “Catalogue of the Recent Marine Sponges of Canada and Alaska” (1900).

In 1892, he married Mabel Maud Schreiber (1869-1930). He died on March 12, 1919, in Ottawa, Ontario.