of the Lord Jeff mascot. The decision to drop the mascot was made official by the college's trustees on January 26, 2016.
In April 2017, Amherst announced that their official mascot would be the mammoth. Mammoths beat the other finalists "Valley Hawks", "Purple and White", "Wolves", and "Fighting Poets" in a ranked-choice election process. The mammoth is linked to Amherst due to the long-standing presence of a Columbian Mammoth skeleton on display in the Beneski Museum of Natural History on campus, which dated back to the 1920s excavation of the skeleton by Amherst professor Frederic Brewster Loomis in Melbourne, Florida.
== Athletics ==
Amherst participates in the NCAA's Division III, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Small College Athletic Conference, which includes Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams College. Amherst is also one of the "Little Three", along with Williams and Wesleyan. A Little Three champion …
