Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, was a British palaeontologist.
Born in Oxford, Whiteaves was educated at private schools, and afterwards worked under John Phillips at Oxford; he was led to study the Oolitic rocks, and added largely to our knowledge of the fossils of the Great Oolite series, Cornbrash and Corallian.
In 1861 he visited Canada and made acquaintance with the geology of Quebec and Montreal, and in 1863 he was appointed curator of the museum and secretary of the Natural History Society of Montreal, posts which he occupied until 1875. He studied the land and freshwater mollusca of Lower Canada, and the marine invertebrata of the coasts; and also carried on researches among the older Silurian fossils of the neighbourhood of Montreal.
In 1875, he joined the palaeontological branch of the Geological Survey of Canada at Montreal; in the following year he became palaeontologist, and in 1877 he was further appointed zoologist and assistant director of the survey.
In 1881 the offices of the survey were removed to Ottawa, Ontario. His publications on Canadian zoology and palaeontology are numerous and important.