POCATELLO -- A local professor who drew worldwide attention through his research on a creature of legend has died.

The family of Don Jeffrey Meldrum, who held a Ph.D. in anatomical sciences and was a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, announced his passing in a post on his professional Facebook page on Thursday.

Meldrum spoke about his research on Sasquatch, a cryptid commonly referred to as Bigfoot, in many professional and popular publications, and was interviewed by media outlets, including EastIdahoNews.com in 2019.

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"It is with profound sadness that the Meldrum family shares that Dr. Meldrum has passed following a battle with brain cancer. The illness was brief, and he passed with his family at his side," reads the post, written by his wife, Lauren Stewart.

Meldrum taught at ISU as a full-time professor since 1993, teaching human anatomy in the graduate health professions programs, according to his biography on ISU's website.

The biography summarizes his research as encompassing "questions of vertebrate evolutionary morphology generally, primate locomotor adaptations more particularly, and especially the emergence of modern human bipedalism."

Meldrum co-edited "From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running and Resource Transport" in 2004 with Charles E. Hilton, which "proposes a more recent innovation of modern striding gait than previously assumed," reads his biography.

"My day-to-day research is primarily focused on the evolution of human bipedalism," Meldrum told EastIdahoNews.com in 2019. "But I have an interest in the possible existence of Sasquatch and have made a study of the footprint evidence to that end."

In 1996, Meldrum's fascination with Bigfoot began when he examined a set of 15-inch footprints in Washington state.

"Now his lab houses well over 300 footprint casts attributed to this mystery primate," the biography reads.

His family's post acknowledged his research into the legendary creature but said they knew him for a different reason.

"He loved teaching and researching Bigfoot. But he was a husband and father first. I am so grateful to have shared the last 17 years of my life with him," Stewart says.

Stewart's post ends by saying, "He was a force of nature. Please respect our privacy in our time of grief."