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This is a list of continental landmasses, continents, and continental subregions by population. For statistical convenience, the population of continental landmasses also include the population of their associated islands .
A continent is a large geographical region defined by the continental shelves and the cultures on the continent. [1] In the modern day, there are seven continents. However, there have been more continents throughout history. Vaalbara was the first supercontinent. [2] Europe is the newest continent. [3]
He noticed that there was a significant similarity between matching sides of the continents, especially in fossil plants. Fossil patterns across continents . From 1912, Wegener publicly advocated the existence of "continental drift", arguing that all the continents were once joined in a single landmass and had since drifted apart.
(Definitions of "continents" are a physical and cultural construct dating back centuries, long before the advent or even knowledge of plate tectonics; thus, defining a "continent" falls into the realm of physical and cultural geography (i.e. geopolitics), while continental plate definitions fall under plate tectonics in the realm of geology.)
Due to the strength of Christian beliefs during the 17th century, the theory of the origin of the Earth that was most widely accepted was A New Theory of the Earth published in 1696, by William Whiston. [9] Whiston used Christian reasoning to "prove" that the Great Flood had occurred and that the flood had formed the rock strata of the Earth.
Rise of the Continents is a British documentary television series that premiered on BBC Two on 9 June 2013. The four-part series is presented by geologist Iain Stewart.The series hypothesizes how 250 million years in the future, all of the continents will collide together once more, forming a new Pangea, with Eurasia right at its heart.
The speculation that continents might have "drifted" was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. A pioneer of the modern view of mobilism was the Austrian geologist Otto Ampferer. [3] [4] The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in his 1915 publication, "The Origin of Continents and Oceans". [5]
The concept that the continents once formed a contiguous land mass was hypothesised, with corroborating evidence, by Alfred Wegener, the originator of the scientific theory of continental drift, in three 1912 academic journal articles written in German titled Die Entstehung der Kontinente (The Origin of Continents). [11]