William E. Schevill

William E. Schevill

William Edward "Bill" Schevill (July 2, 1906 – July 25, 1994) was an American paleontologist famous for his part in dynamiting out the nodules of the most complete skeleton of the short-necked pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicus discovered in Hughenden in Queensland, Australia, in 1932. He later became known as an authority on the sounds of whales. Schevill had the title of scientist emeritus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he had begun working in 1943, technically retiring in 1985.

Early Education

Born July 2, 1906 in Brooklyn, New York, William E. Schevill grew up in Manhattan, New York, and St Louis, Missouri. Graduating from Harvard in 1927, he saw the rejuvenation of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) as initiated by the new director Thomas Barbour and, in 1928, Bill Schevill was made the assistant of Percy Raymond, Professor and Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology. Soon promoted to Associate Curator, Schevill traveled with Professor Raymond on "significant fossil-collecting expeditions to the Burgess Shale, British Columbia (1930) and to Estonia, Norway and Sweden (1934)."

The Harvard Australian Expedition (1931-1932)

In 1931 the (MCZ) sent an expedition to Australia for the dual purpose of procuring specimens - the museum being "weak in Australian animals and...desires[ing] to complete its series" - and to engage in "the study of the animals of the region when alive." The Harvard Australian Expedition (1931-1932), as it became known, was a six-man venture led by Harvard Professor William Morton Wheeler, with three of the others being a Dr. Jackson, Dr. P.J. Darlington Jr. (a renowned coleopterist) and William E. Schevill. MCZ director Thomas Barbour said at the time "We shall hope for specimens' of the kangaroo, the wombat, the Tasmanian devil and Tasmanian wolf," and the mission was a success with over a hundred mammals and thousands of insect specimens returning to the United States. Yet Mr. Schevill, the team's fossil enthusiast, remained in Australia after the others had departed and, in the winter of 1932, was told by the rancher R.W.H. Thomas of rocks with something "odd" poking out of them on his property near Hughenden. The rocks were limestone nodules containing the most complete skeleton of a Kronosaurus ever discovered. After dynamiting the nodules out of the ground (and into smaller pieces weighing approximately four tons) with the aid of a British migrant trained in the use of explosives, Scheville had the fossils shipped back to Harvard for examination and preparation. The skull—which matched the holotype jaw fragment of K. queenslandicus—was prepared right away, but time and budget constraints put off restoration of the nearly complete skeleton - most of the bones of which remained unexcavated within the limestone blocks - for 20 years.

Following his return from the expedition, William E. Schevill was made a librarian of the MCZ from 1936 to 1943, "and Barbour noted in 1937 that he had 'a decided taste for bibliography'." Unsurprisingly, Mr. Schevill became a founding member of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History in 1936. During this period he earned a Master's degree in paleontology from Harvard, and met Barbara Lawrence, his future wife and the MCZ's Curator of Mammals. They married in 1938 and had two children, a daughter name Lee, and a son named Edward.

Cetology

Becoming an Associate in Physical Oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts in 1943, Bill Schevill's first work regarded US Naval auspices investigating echo-location of U-boats. As he later wrote in 1962: "During World War II many people on both sides listened to underwater sounds for military reasons. Not only the wanted sounds (those made by enemy ships), but a bewildering variety of others were heard. Most of these were ascribed to animals living in the sea, usually as “fish noises” ... Some were ascribed to whales, in part correctly, but without identification of the kind of whale; most military listeners were not biologists, and in any case the traditional naval sonar room is woefully deficient in windows." Such maritime work inspired him and, leaving Palaeontology behind, led William E. Schevill become "one of the world's most innovative whale biologists and an undisputed pioneer in the field of whale sounds," performing the first recordings of underwater sounds and extrapolating their purpose from these recordings. In accordance with his groundbreaking work, Dr. Schevill would publish over fifty papers on whale phonation and thus provide the framework for “literally hundreds of scientific studies produced by other workers from the 1960s until the present day." However, it is worthy of note that his Barbara Lawrence often co-wrote these documents with him.

William E. Schevill's study of whales also at one point harked back to the U.S. Naval operations that first set him down this path. As noted upon his death by the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, "Bill helped defuse a tense moment between the USA and Soviet Union during the Cold War. The US military suspected that low frequency blips were being used by the Soviets to locate American submarines, whereas Bill showed these were produced by fin whales ( Balaenoptera physalus ) hunting prey."

William E. Schevill technically retired in 1985, though he continued to work unofficially even after, and died of pneumonia Monday July 25, 1994 at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass, where he lived; survived by his wife, daughter, and son.

External Links

• W. E. Schevill Dies; Authority on Sounds Of Whales Was 88
• Obituary Barbara Lawrence Schevill: 1909-1997