Allison Beck was born on July 5, 1974 in New Haven, Connecticut but grew up in Memphis, Tennessee.

She played soccer and the piano as a kid, but her favorite thing to do was visit her grandparents on Long Island, New York because they would ride in her grandma's Camaro and go to the American Museum of Natural History dinosaur hall. In high school, she played soccer, volunteered, babysat, and worked at the local ice cream store.

She enjoyed school, but she was ready to move on to Georgetown University. Allison is currently a fourth year graduate student in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. She was a member of the 1997 expedition to Niger. This time she is much more confident generally (she had never been camping before the 1997 expedition!) and about her own abilities to find things and identify them in the field. She is really looking forward to spending time with friends because "being out in the field in a place like Niger really brings people together in a unique way."

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