Pellegrino was born on May 5, 1953, to John and Jane Pellegrino. He grew up in
Queens and
Rockville Centre, New York. At age 15, Pellegrino was diagnosed with cancer and a rare genetic disease,
Ankylosing spondylitis. During the mid-1970s, Pellegrino earned bachelor's and master's degrees at
Long Island University. Pellegrino claimed to have received a PhD in 1982 from
Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. The university investigated his claim and said that it had never awarded him a PhD; the university's vice chancellor said that Pellegrino's thesis was not approved and that the Governor-General denied his appeal. A revised edition,
To Hell and Back: The Last Train From Hiroshima, was released on August 6, 2015. It was published by
Rowman & Littlefield. Pellegrino was the first person to use
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to image the inside of 70-million-year-old dinosaur eggs. ==Bibliography==