Where does it no longer be a island and become a continent? A island is a “landmass surronded by water”, so by what size does it stop being a island and become a continent.
I’ve heard that australia is sometimes considered a island while greenland is supposedly the largest island in the world.
Cann somebody clear this up for me?
This has been delt with several times before, but here goes …
Depends on your definitions, but generally accepted that Australia is - the largest island (7,617,930 sq km)
- only island continent
- only continent country
There is no real distinction. Australia, the smallest continent, is about 2.5 times the land area of Greenland, the largest island; that furnishes a reasonable “size” distinction. IIRC there is a natural break at about 1 million square miles that Australia is significantly larger than and Greenland falls definitely below. Europe has had “continent” status since the term began to be used for the large mainland masses surrounding the Mediterranean and Black Seas; its boundary with Asia is an arbitrary definition based on a couple of natural features that serve to draw the line.
One classic differentiation is that a continent has at least two cordilleras (mountain-range complexes not related to each other) while an island, if it has a mountain range, has one as a single “spine” – but to consider Australia and South America as fitting this definition is really stretching a point, while Greenland is at least as eligible as they on a “expanded” definition. (And Greenland is geologically part of North America in the same way as Great Britain and Ireland are geologically part of Europe, FWIW).
And Antarctica is only a single land mass due to the icecap – it would apparently be a small continent, a large long and narrow near-continental island, and a number of island chains if the ice were not present.
New Guinea, however, though the second largest island, does fit the mountain range definition. And is sufficiently smaller than either Greenland or Australia to make the distinction quite clear.
Hang on, … an island can’t be a continent, thus Greenland is the largest island. :smack:
[ul]Let’s start a petition to change Greenland into a continent.
[sup] The problem would be that we’d get very little local support.[/sup][/ul]