Continent

Seven Continents

A continent is one of several very large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven regions are commonly regarded as continents geopolitically. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, these seven regions are: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Schemes with fewer continents may merge some of these, for example some systems include Europe and Asia as single continent called Eurasia or North and South America as a single continent called America.

Geologically, the continents correspond to areas of continental crust that are found on the continental plates, but include continental fragments such as Madagascar that are not counted among the geopolitical continents. Some geological continents are largely covered with water, such as Zealandia (see submerged continents below). Continental crust is only known to exist on Earth.

Oceanic islands are frequently grouped with a neighbouring continent to divide all the world's land into geopolitical regions. Under this scheme, most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean are grouped together with the continent of Australia to form a geopolitical region called Oceania.

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