but in the past half century a threat has emerged and as wade freedman reports, it's killing off speciesn record numbers. >> you are looking at a survivor, a class of species that's outlasted 90% of all life on this planet through four mass extinctionings and now after $360 million, amphibians are in jeopardy. >> they did fine through all the mass extinction events but now they are dying. >> victims of a microscopic path general that's spread worldwide. at san francisco state, the professor wants to save them by finding out how and why. >> we get little microscopic organisms, the fungi we are looking for. >> he has a new tool that will allow them to trace the history of this pandemic by identifying its dna on old lab speaks mims. >> tells us a lot. else us where it came from. >> the significance of this paper goes well beyond amphibians. it's about how a pandemic spreads among a species. amount amphibians have been affected this time but it to as easily affect humans. >> it follows a pattern. we are looking at microscopic organisms. >> the same thing that cause this is disease it pertine

as abc7's wade freedman reports, it's killing off species in record numbers. >> you are looking at aurvivor, a class of species that's outlasted 90% of all life on this planet through four mass extinctionings and now after $360 million, amphibians are in jeopardy. >> they did fine through all the mass extinction events but now they are dying. victims of a microscopic pathogen that's spread worldwide. at san francisco state, the professor wants to save them by finding out how and why. >> we get little microscopic organisms, the fungi we are looking for. >> he has a new tool that will allow them to trace the history of this pandemic by identifying its d2346789a on old lab specimens. >> tells us a lot. tells us where it came from. >> the significance of this paper goes well beyond amphibians. it's about how a pandemic spreads among a species. amphibians have been affected this time but it to as easily affect humans. >> diseases tend to follow the same patterns. so we are looking at microscopic organisms. >> the same thing that cause this is disease it pertinent to see how disease affect