Palaeontology of the Upper Missouri: A Report Upon Collections Made Principally by the Expeditions Under Command of Lieut. G. K. Warren, U.S. Top. Engrs., in 1855 and 1856. Invertebrates
Fielding Bradford Meek was an American geologist and paleontologist. He made substantial pioneering contributions to the knowledge of extinct faunas and stratigraphic geology.
Background
Fielding Bradford Meek was born on December 10, 1817, in Madison, Indiana, United States. His father, a lawyer, had migrated thither from Hamilton County, Ohio, where his parents, Irish Presbyterians who came to America about 1768, had settled prior to his birth. When Fielding was but three years of age his father died. Little is known of his early life in Indiana and Kentucky, except that frail health and the early death of his father rendered his childhood and young adulthood difficult.
Education
As a youth, Meek devoted most of his time to the study of natural history. He was educated in the public schools of Madison but was greatly hampered by ill health, which handicapped him throughout his life. During this early period, however, he began to show an inclination toward the sciences.
Career
Upon reaching manhood, by the advice of his friends but against his own inclination, Meek invested his small patrimony in a mercantile business, first in Madison and afterward in Owensboro, Kentucky. The result was a financial failure. After this he labored at whatever he could find to do, struggling with poverty and ill health, but improving every opportunity to advance his studies, which then began in earnest to include the fossils found in the region of his home. His earnestness in this direction drew the attention of Dr. David Dale Owen, who, when he began to organize his United States Geological Survey of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, made young Meek one of his assistants. He held that position during the years 1848 and 1849, at the end of which time he returned to Owensboro.
From 1852 until 1858 Meek served as an assistant to James Hall, paleontologist of New York, at Albany. During this interval, he worked two summers for the Geological Survey of Missouri and spent the summer of 1853 exploring, with F. V. Hayden, the Badlands of South Dakota and surrounding areas. Accounts and letters indicate that throughout this time Hall tyrannized and exploited his modest and retiring assistant.
In 1857 Meek first recognized the occurrence of Permian fossils in North America. Unfortunately, he became involved in a bitter controversy concerning the priority of this discovery. He also felt, probably justifiably, that Hall was claiming credit for other significant age determinations that he had made.
In 1858 Meek left Albany and became the first fulltime paleontologist associated with the Smithsonian Institution. Although he received no salary, Joseph Henry permitted him to live in the south tower of the Smithsonian building. Progressive deafness and continued poor health combined to limit his professional contacts.
Despite his physical handicaps, Meek completed a prodigious quantity of descriptions of invertebrate fossils and probably ranks only behind Hall and C. D. Walcott in sheer volume of published pages. Although many works were published jointly with his associate Hayden or with A. H. Worthen of the Illinois Geological Survey, it is likely that almost all of this work, including many plates of illustrations, was done entirely by Meek. Meek also published for the Ohio and California Geological Surveys.
Meek’s principal contributions may be divided into three parts. The first, begun while he was still at Albany, included descriptions and interpretations of fossils collected by Hayden before the Civil War and laid the groundwork for stratigraphic and age interpretations of rocks of the Great Plains. The second part comprised his descriptions of the Paleozoic fossils of Illinois, especially those of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian age. His third great body of work relates to the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, with which his name is closely associated, although he was never formally employed by it. He is particularly noted for investigations of freshwater faunas at the Mesozoic-Cenozoic boundary.
Meek described invertebrate fossils of almost every phylum from all geologic periods, from Cambrian to Tertiary and over a wide area. His descriptions and observations on fossils are still valid; and his geologic interpretations, based on these fossils, have contributed materially to a better understanding of the geology of about half of the United States.
Meek was never in robust health, he was modest and retiring to a marked degree, and asked in return for his labors only a sum barely sufficient for the most meager and commonplace existence.
Physical Characteristics:
Meek was of tall and slender build, his height being at times somewhat exaggerated by the tall black silk hat he persistently wore. He was naturally diffident, and growing deafness which began in early manhood gradually cut him off from all associations but those with personal and scientific friends.