Skeptics think Bigfoot researcher is a big joke

POCATELLO, Idaho — The professors talking over coffee in the Life Sciences building at Idaho State University don't include Jeffrey Meldrum. As usual, the scientist is alone in his laboratory, weaving past jars of yellow liquid and plaster molds of giant, dinosaur-like footprints.

He opens a thin, metal filing drawer.

"These are the first ones I collected," he says, "of Bigfoot."

In the muddy Blue Mountains near Walla Walla, Wash., the footprints lay about 35 or 40 in a row, each about 15 inches long.

He thought he'd dismiss them as a hoax. But Meldrum, a primatologist and anatomist, noticed locked joints and a narrow arch — traits he would argue in the following 10 years of research that only could belong to Bigfoot.

"That's what set the hook," said Meldrum. "I resolved at this point, this was a question I'd get to the bottom of."

Meldrum has collected more than 200 Bigfoot prints. He says he believes in the principles of science and in Bigfoot. His colleagues at Idaho State University are hostile, some even calling for the school to revoke his tenure. One physics professor D.P. Wells, wondered if Meldrum also planned to research Santa Claus.

If Meldrum's right, he's a lonely visionary. If he's wrong, he's a rogue scientist on the fringe of academia. Still, Meldrum has added the scholarly research of a tenured Ph.D. to the murky catalog of Bigfoot sham videos and supermarket tabloid cover stories.

"It used to be you went to a bookstore and asked for a book on Bigfoot and you'd be directed to the 'occult section,' right between the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs," Meldrum said. "Now you can find some in the natural science section."

The Bigfoot legend dates back centuries. American Indian folklore in the Pacific Northwest includes murmurs of a man-ape beast that roams the hidden hollows. Sasquatch, as Bigfoot is often known, is a Salish Indian name meaning woodland wildman.

Newspapers began recording the first Bigfoot sightings in the 1920s, as several backcountry reports surfaced. Just as quickly, skeptics arose to challenge the accounts, and practical jokers staged elaborate hoaxes.

Without a fossil record or a confirmed sighting, Bigfoot entered the realm of fantasy until Grover Krantz, an eccentric professor at Washington State University, began supplementing his traditional research with papers on the sasquatch.