Elkanah Billings was born on May 5, 1820, in Ottawa, Ontario.

He was an Ontario lawyer, journalist, and renowned as the father of Canadian paleontology. In 1839, he registered as a student at the Law Society of Upper Canada, and in 1845, he was called to the Canadian bar. In 1852, he founded the journal the Canadian Naturalist and Geologist and became editor of the Bytown Citizen (later renamed the Ottawa Citizen). He continued to practise law until 1856 when he was hired to be the first paleontologist for the Geological Survey of Canada. He moved to its headquarters in Montreal. He found his real vocation in geology and paleontology and spent the rest of his life studying and describing the fossils preserved in the museum of the Survey. In his lifetime, he identified 1065 new species and 61 new genera, including Aspidella, the first documented fossil of the Ediacaran biota. He was also a member of the Natural History Society of Montreal, the Geological Society of London, and had been awarded medals by the International Exhibition of London in 1862 and by the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1867.

In 1845, he married Helen Walker Wilson. He died on June 14, 1876, in Montreal, Quebec.