William Joscelyn Arkell FGS, FRS (9 June 1904 – 18 April 1958) was a British geologist and palaeontologist, regarded as the leading authority on the Jurassic Period during the middle part of the 20th century. Childhood Arkell was born in Highworth, Wiltshire, the youngest of a family of seven. His father, James Arkell was a partner in the prosperous family business Arkell's Brewery (which is still family owned today). His mother, Laura Jane Arkell was an artist of noted ability. He developed a deep love of the English countryside from an early age, perhaps gained from long family summer holidays spent at Swanage, Dorset. He was later educated at Wellington College in Berkshire, where his ability in Natural History was recognised and he was able to devote significant time to develop his knowledge of this subject. He was a regular prize winner for his natural history essays, one of which was a treatise on the Dorset Robber Flies (Asilidae). He privately published a set of poems, Seven Poems, that reflected his love of nature and the outdoors. Student life In October 1922, at the second attempt (after failing the Latin examination), Arkell was admitted to New College, Oxford. He had initially intended to read entomology but despite being tutored by the great Julian Huxley, he decided that his career lay in geology and palaeontology. In 1925 he graduated with First Class Honours in geology. He remained at the University of Oxford after being awarded a Burdett-Coutts research scholarship. His research topic involved the taxonomy of the bivalves from the Upper Jurassic Corallian beds of England. For this and other papers on the Jurassic of southern England he was awarded a D Phil in 1928. Whilst undertaking his doctoral research, Arkell spent four winter seasons (1926–30) investigating evidence of Palaeolithic human remains in the Nile Valley of Egypt in association with the University of Chicago. Four notable monographs were the result of this work. Geological research Arkell was awarded a lectureship in geology at New College, Oxford in 1927, and was made a senior research fellow of that College in 1929. With little teaching or administrative duties to speak of, Arkell was able to devote almost all his time to research. This culminated with the publication in 1933 of The Jurassic System of Great Britain. This 681-page work critically examined and consolidated all previous work on the Jurassic, including the formations