In Britain, where better records have been kept, more than half the native bumblebee species either have become extinct or are facing extinction in the next few decades.

NEWYORKER: Stung

Besides bringing new species to the textbooks - and relegating them immediately to the "extinct" category - the study sheds new light on the extinction event, widely thought to have been caused by an enormous asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65.5 million years ago.

BBC: Obama-named lizard was wiped out with the dinosaurs

That made it the most valuable charity auction to support conservation projects, which is important, because as DiCaprio mentioned in his opening speech, less than 2% of philanthropic dollars globally support conservation projects, despite the fact that 140, 000 animal and plant species are becoming extinct every year, which is 10, 000 times the historic extinction rate.

FORBES: Leonardo DiCaprio's Charity Auction Raises $38M To Fund Global Conservation