Elkanah Billings

Elkanah Billings (born May 5, 1820 in Gloucester (Ontario) , now part of Ottawa , † June 14, 1876 in Montreal ) was a Canadian paleontologist who was a lawyer and journalist by nature.

Billings came from a family of farmers and studied from 1839 Jura . In 1844 he was admitted to the bar. He was also an amateur geologist and paleontologist. He also worked as a journalist. From 1852 to 1856 he was editor of the Ottawa Citizen. In 1854 his first scientific publication in paleontology took place in the journal of the Canadian Institute in Toronto, of which he became a member that same year. In 1856 he founded the magazine Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, in which he also published his work for twenty years (alongside other scientific journals such as the American Journal of Science and Arts in New Haven and the Geological Magazine in London). In 1856 he turned entirely to paleontology as the first paleontologist to be employed by the Geological Survey of Canada . Its director William Edmond Logan had become aware of Billings through his essays and brought him to the Geological Survey, which was based in Montreal.

Billings published over 200 scientific papers, including zoology. In paleontology, he published in particular on the Paleozoic , and here on all known animal phyla . But he also published on fossils from all over the earth's history up to the mammoth.

He identified over 1000 new species and 61 genera of fossils, including many trilobites and, for example, in 1872 the first documented fossil of the Precambrian Ediacaran fauna , Aspidella ( Aspidella terranovica ), found by Alexander Murray (who considered it a mechanical relic like education of gas bubbles) in the sandstone in St. John's on Newfoundland and about 570 million years old.

In 1858 he became a member of the Geological Society of London . He received medals at the World's Fair in London in 1862 and in Paris in 1867 and an award from the Natural History Society of Montreal.

Fonts

Sections on paleontology in the Report of the Geological Survey of Canada 1863, edited by William Edmond Logan ( Geology of Canada )
Palaeozoic Fossils , Volume 1 ( Containing descriptions and figures of new or little known species of organic remains from the Silurian rocks, 1861-1865 ). Dawson Brothers, Montreal. Geological Survey of Canada, Separate Report, 1865, Volume 2, 1874
Catalogs of the Silurian fossils of the Island of Anticosti, with descriptions of some new genera and species , Geological Survey of Canada, Montreal, London, New York, and Paris, 1866
His complete list of publications is in D. B. Dowling General index to the reports of progress, 1863 to 1884 , Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, 1900

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personal data
SURNAME	Billings, Elkanah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Canadian paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 5, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gloucester, Ontario , now part of Ottawa
DATE OF DEATH	June 14, 1876
Place of death	Montreal