Sir Frederick McCoy KCMG FRS (1817 – 13[1] May 1899), was an Irish palaeontologist, zoologist, and museum administrator, active in Australia.

At the age of eighteen he published a Catalogue of Organic Remains compiled from specimens exhibited in the Rotunda at Dublin (1841).

[3][5] In 1846 Adam Sedgwick secured his services, and for at least four years he devoted himself to the determination and arrangement of the fossils in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge.

[3] McCoy's examination of fossil material preserving the teeth of Thylacoleo, an extinct carnivore, saw him enter the debate on the apparent absence of large predators in Australia's mammalian fauna; McCoy sided with Richard Owen's interpretation of his new species as representing a "marsupial lion".

[7] In 1854, McCoy accepted the newly founded professorship of natural science in the University of Melbourne, where he lectured for upwards of thirty years.

[3][9] When McCoy began his work at the university there were few students, and for many years he took classes in chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, comparative anatomy, geology and palaeontology.

In endeavouring to cover so much ground it was impossible for him to keep his reading up to date in all these sciences, and he remained most distinguished as a palaeontologist.

McCoy sought to replace what he perceived as the silence or unpleasant noises of the Australian bush with sounds of English songbirds, and celebrated the successful introduction of the european rabbit and starling which were already recognised as pests by the colonial farmers.