Golden hamster stock of hamsters was exported from Syria to the United States in 1971, but apparently none of today's North American pets is descended from these (at least in the female line), because recent mitochondrial DNA studies have established that all domestic golden hamsters are descended from one female – probably the one captured in 1930 in Syria. Since the species was named, the genus "Cricetus" has been subdivided and this species (together with several others) was separated into the genus "Mesocricetus", leading to the currently accepted scientific name for the golden hamster of "Mesocricetus auratus". Following Professor Aharoni's collection in
The Hamsters Bronze. In 1994, after having re-learned the bass using a custom-designed thumb-pick, he rejoined the band when Bronze left to join Eric Clapton's band. In 2011, Billups released a solo album "Afton Down", in a more "folky" style than The Hamsters material, which does not credit any contributions by Martin or Parish. From 2017 onwards Billups has been the bass player with the Free tribute band, Tons of Sobs. As the band always intended to combine humour and music and wanted to remain relatively anonymous, they decided to adopt light-hearted stage names: The Hamsters The Hamsters were a British band