D. Jeffrey Meldrum
Professor
Biological Sciences
Idaho State University
United States of America
Biography
Dr. Meldrum joined the ISU faculty in 1993, after a stint with the Northwestern University Medical Center. His research revolves around questions of vertebrate evolutionary morphology generally, primate locomotor adaptations in particular. His doctoral research explored terrestrial adaptations in African primates, and has since taken him from the dusty skeletal cabinets of far-flung museums to the remote badlands of Colombia and Argentina in search of fossil New World primates. He has published extensively on the evolutionary history of the South American primates and has described several new extinct species. He has documented varied primate locomotor specializations in laboratory and semi-natural settings. More recently his attention has returned to the emergence of modern human bipedalism. His co-edited volume, From Biped to Strider: the Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport, proposes a more recent innovation of modern striding gait than previously assumed. His interests also encompass the evaluation of the footprints purportedly left by an unrecognized North American ape, commonly known as sasquatch, and other potentially unrecognized hominoids around the globe. He has authored an expanded companion volume to the very successful Discovery Channel documentary, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.
Research Interest
Functional morphology and evolutionary anthropology.
Publications
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Meldrum DJ. 2012, Adaptive radiations, bushy evolutionary trees, and relict hominoids, The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 1:51-56.
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Mitchell P, Sarmiento EE, Meldrum DJ (2012) The AL333-160 fourth metatarsal from Hadar compared to that of humans, great apes, baboons and proboscis monkeys: Non-conclusive evidence for pedal arches or obligate bipedality in Hadar hominins. HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology 63:336–367.
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Kay RF, Meldrum DJ, and Takai M. (2013) Pitheciidae and other Platyrrhine Seed Predators: the Dual Occupation of the Seed Predator Niche during Platyrrhine Evolution. In: Ferrari SF, Barnett A, Veiga L, Evolutionary Biology and Conservation of Titis, Sakis, and Uacaris. Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-12.
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Lockley MG, Meldrum DJ, Kim JY (2016) Major events in hominin evolution. In: Mángano, L.A. Buatois (eds.), The Trace-Fossil Record of Major Evolutionary Events in Geobiology 40:411-448.
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Meldrum J (2016) Sasquatch and other wildmen: the search for relict hominoids Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 356–374.
