William Joscelyn Arkell FGS, FRS[1] (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.

[1] 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 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.

[1] Whilst undertaking his doctoral research, Arkell spent four winter seasons (1926–1930) alongside K. S. Sandford, investigating evidence of Palaeolithic human remains in the Nile valley of Egypt in association with the University of Chicago.

Arkell was interested in the tectonic history of Southern England, particularly with reference to the highly folded beds of the Isle of Purbeck.

[1] After demobilisation at the end of the war, Arkell accepted a senior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, holding an office at the Sedgwick Museum.

In this time Arkell began to work on the use of ammonites as zone fossils in Jurassic stratigraphy and became the leading expert on this specialist area.

In the autumn of 1956 he suffered a severe stroke which left him partially paralysed and with double vision; this was a detriment to his Sunday hobby of watercolour painting.