This is one of a series presented by the National Aviary. The National Aviary works to inspire respect for nature through an appreciation of birds. (Today)

Norton D. Zinder, a researcher who helped lay the basis for the new field of molecular biology in the 1950s and '60s and who played a crucial role in the politics of decoding the human genome, died on Friday in a nursing home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He was 83. (Today)

Q. Are oral plaque, coronary vessel plaque and eye plaque the same substance? (Today)

A giant crocodile with a bulging shield of thickened skin on its forehead lived among dinosaurs, a new study reports. (Yesterday)

By filtering through 25 gallons of seawater from Puget Sound, a computer scientist in Washington State has managed to tease out and sequence the DNA of a tiny microbe that has eluded scientists for years. (Yesterday)