William Edward "Bill" Schevill 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.
William E. Schevill
Kronosaurus is an extinct genus of large short-necked pliosaur Aptian to Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous in what is now Australia. The first known specimen was received in 1899 and consists of a partially preserved mandibular symphysis, which was first thought to come from an ichthyosaur according to Charles De Vis. However, it was 1924 that Albert Heber Longman formally described this specimen as the holotype of an imposing pliosaurid, to which he gave the scientific name K. queenslandicus, which is still the only recognized species nowadays. The genus name, meaning "lizard of Kronos", refers to its large size and possible ferocity reminiscent of the Titan of the Greek mythology, while the species name alludes to Queensland, the Australian state of its discovery. In the early 1930s, the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology sent an organized expedition to Australia that recovered two specimens historically attributed to the taxon, including a partial skeleton that is now massively restored in plaster. Several attributed fossils were subsequently discovered, including two large, more or less complete skeletons proposed as potential neotypes. Two additional species were proposed, but these are now seen as invalid or belonging to another genus.
Kronosaurus
QM F1609, the holotype mandibular symphysis of K. queenslandicus
MCZ 1285, the Harvard skeleton historically attributed to Kronosaurus, sometimes nicknamed "Plasterosaurus". This specimen would have been reconstructed with too many vertebrae and with wrong cranial proportions
Assigned specimen in Kronosaurus Korner museum, Queensland