TIL Columbus never set foot in North America; he only explored the Caribbean and parts of Central and South America.
TIL Columbus never set foot in North America; he only explored the Caribbean and parts of Central and South America.
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As others have pointed out:
That map says that New Zealand is part of the continent of Australia, which it is not. New Zealand is on a submerged continent called Zealandia
Continent are fairly subjective. Some favor strictly connected lands (joining Eurasia). Others do it by the tectonic plates. Other by culture barriers drawing a line between Europe and Asia.
For the purposes of the post I simply meant to convey that the NA v SA distinction is widely accepted to be at the thinnest point between them. Which would include Central America w/ NA.
Right, but on an article clarifying the often misunderstood continental boundaries, I thought it might be helpful to point out that map was creating more of that confusion in a different area, whilst clarifying it for another
To me adding Zealandia as a separate continent would just add to confusion. Especially that the community is still divided on classifying it as a continent or not.
At least New Zealand's on this map. :)
Zealandia (pronounced /ziːˈlændiə/), also known as Te Riu-a-Māui (Māori)[2] or Tasmantis (from Tasman Sea),[3][4] is an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust in Oceania that subsided after breaking away from Gondwana 83–79 million years ago.[5] It has been described variously as a submerged continent, continental fragment, and microcontinent.[6] The name and concept for Zealandia was proposed by Bruce Luyendyk in 1995,[7] and satellite imagery shows it to be almost the size of Australia.[8] A 2021 study suggests Zealandia is over a billion years old, about twice as old as geologists previously thought.[9][10]