Fielding Bradford Meek was born on December 10, 1817, in Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana.

He was an American geologist, paleontologist, and author. In early life, he was in business as a merchant, but when he started to lose his hearing, he devoted most of his leisure time to collecting fossils and studying the rocks. In 1848, he was made assistant to Dr. David Dale Owen and helped organize the U.S. Geological Survey of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In 1852, he became assistant to Prof. James Hall at Albany, New York, and worked at paleontology with him until 1858. In 1853, he accompanied Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden on an exploration of the badlands of Dakota and brought back valuable collections of fossils. They published many writings under the name “Meek & Hayden”. In 1858, Meek moved to Washington, D.C., and became a member of the Megatherium Club at the Smithsonian Institution. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1867. He was the author and co-author of several publications, e.g., "Carboniferous and Jurassic fossils" (1864) and “Report on the Invertebrate Cretaceous and Tertiary Fossils of the Upper Missouri Country" (1876).

He died on December 21, 1876, in Washington, District of Columbia.