He joined the Navy as a sub-lieutenant assigned to convey escort duties in the North Atlantic.
He was appointed a departmental demonstrator in the geology department of the University of Oxford[1] and was eventually promoted to lecturer.
He was employed at the University of Oxford as a lecturer, tutor, supervisor of research, and leader of geological field excursions.
[1] His doctoral thesis, with advisor William Joscelyn Arkell,[2] is entitled Variation in the Terebratulacea of the Fuller's Earth Rock.
[3] During the late 1950s McKerrow began collaborating with geologists in the US and Canada and became an expert on the geological links across the Atlantic during the Palaeozoic.
Press) [4][5][6] and the co-editor, with Christopher R. Scotese, of the book Palaeozoic Palaeogeography and Biogeography (1990, Geological Society of London).
[7] With F. Brian Atkins (1937–2013), he published Isle of Arran: A Field Guide for Students of Geology (1989, Geologists' Association).