Elephants are big—as much as 12,000 pounds—and noble and threatened in the wild, which makes the San Diego’s zoo Elephant Odyssey all the more essential to see. On view are five majestic pachyderms, one male bull elephant (Ranchipur) and four females. They’re mesmerizing, but there’s more to this fascinating exhibit. Like, for example, a fossil dig site where a simulated tar pit reminds you that California once hosted its own set of elephantine animals, notably the mammoths that inhabited the Golden State in the Pleistocene, 12,000 years ago.