The disease in its epizootic form was first discovered in 1993 in dead and dying frogs in Queensland, Australia. It had been present in the country since at least 1978 and is widespread across Australia. It is also found in Africa, the Americas, Europe, New Zealand, and Oceania. In Australia, Panama, and New Zealand, the fungus seemed to have suddenly 'appeared' and expanded its range at the same time frog numbers declined. In the Americas, it originated in Venezuela in 1987, where it swept up the continent into Central America. It was also found in the lower part of Central America in 1987, where it spread down to meet the upward sweep from South America. However, it may simply be that the fungus occurs naturally and was only identified recently because it has become more virulent or more prevalent in the environment, or because host populations have become less resistant to the disease. The fungus has been detected in four areas of Australia—the east coast, Adelaide, south-west Western Australia and the Kimberley—and is probably present elsewhere. Lately, the genomes of 234 "Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis" isolates were phylogenetically compared and the results strongly suggest that a lineage found in the Korean peninsula likely seeded the panzootic.