Area

8,600,000 km
2
(3,300,000 sq mi)
Population 36,000,000 (estimated population of
Australia, Papua New Guinea, Papua,
West Papua, Maluku Islands, Timor,
Halmahera, etc. for 2009, 6th)
Pop.
density
4.2 /km
2
(11 /sq mi)
Demonym Australian
Countries 4 (Australia, Papua New Guinea, East
Timor* and portions of Indonesia)
Languages English, Indonesian, Tok Pisin, Hiri
Motu, 269 indigenous Papuan and
Austronesian languages, Mandarin
Chinese, Italian, Arabic, Greek,
Cantonese and about 70 Indigenous
Australian languages
Time zones GMT+10, GMT+9.30, GMT+8
Internet
TLD
.au, .pg, .tl, .tp and .id
Largest
cities
List of cities in Australia by population
List of cities and towns in Papua New
Guinea by population
* Often considered as part of Asia
(South East Asia).
Australia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Australia, sometimes known in technical contexts by the
names Sahul, Australinea or Meganesia, to distinguish it
from the Australian mainland, is a continent comprising
mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, Seram, possibly
Timor, and neighbouring islands.
It is the smallest of the seven traditional continents in the
English conception. The continent lies on a continental shelf
overlain by shallow seas which divide it into several
landmassesthe Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between
mainland Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between
mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were
lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the Last
Glacial Maximum about 18,000 BC, they were connected by
dry land. During the past ten thousand years, rising sea levels
overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into
today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two
mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania.
Geologically, a continent extends to the edge of its
continental shelf, so the now-separate islands are considered
part of the continent.
[1]
Due to the spread of animals, fungi
and plants across the single Pleistocene landmass the separate
lands have a related biota.
New Zealand is not part of the continent of Australia, but of
the separate, submerged continent of Zealandia.
[2]
New
Zealand and Australia are both part of the wider regions
known as Australasia and Oceania.
1 Geography and name
2 Geology
3 Biogeography
4 Human habitation
5 See also
6 References
List
Coordinates: 26S 141E
Australia (continent) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)
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Mainland Australia showing the continental
Sahul Shelf (light blue) extending to the
islands of New Guinea in the north, the
island of Timor in the northwest, and
Tasmania in the south
The Sahul continent
With a total land area of 8,560,000 square kilometres
(3,310,000 sq mi), the Australian continent is the smallest and
lowest-lying human-inhabited continent on Earth. The continental
shelf connecting the islands, half of which is less than 50 metres
(160 ft) deep, covers some 2,500,000 square kilometres
(970,000 sq mi), including the Sahul Shelf
[3][4]
and Bass Strait. As
the country of Australia is mostly on a single landmass, and
comprises most of the continent, it is sometimes informally referred
to as an island continent, surrounded by oceans.
[5]
Archaeological
terminology for
this region has
changed
repeatedly. Prior
to the 1970s,
the single
Pleistocene
landmass was
called
Australasia,
[6]
derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern",
although this word is most often used for a wider region that
includes lands like New Zealand that are not on the same
continental shelf. In the early 1970s, the term Greater
Australia was introduced for the Pleistocene continent.
[6]
Then at a 1975 conference and consequent publication,
[7]
the name Sahul was extended from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent.
[6]
In 1984, W. Filewood suggested the name Meganesia, meaning "great island" or "great island-group", for both
the Pleistocene continent and the present-day lands,
[8]
and this name has been widely accepted by biologists.
[9]
Others have used Meganesia with different meanings: travel writer Paul Theroux included New Zealand in his
definition
[10]
and others have used it for Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.
[11]
Another biologist, Richard
Dawkins coined the name Australinea in 2004.
[12]
Australia-New Guinea has also been used.
[13]
The continent primarily sits on the Indo-Australian Plate. Because of its central location on its tectonic plate
Australia doesn't have any active volcanic regions, the only continent with this distinction.
[14]
The lands were
joined with Antarctica as part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana until the plate began to drift north
about 96 million years ago. For most of the time since then, AustraliaNew Guinea remained a continuous
landmass. When the last glacial period ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed Bass Strait,
separating Tasmania from the mainland. Then between about 8,000 and 6,500 BC, the lowlands in the north
were flooded by the sea, separating New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and the Australian mainland.
A northern arc consisting of the New Guinea Highlands, the Raja Ampat Islands, and Halmahera was uplifted by
the northward migration of Australia and subduction of the Pacific Plate. The Outer Banda Arc was accreted
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along the northwestern edge the continent; it includes the islands of Timor, Tanimbar, and Seram.
[15]
As the continent drifted north from Antarctica, a unique fauna, flora and mycobiota developed. Marsupials and
monotremes also existed on other continents, but only in AustraliaNew Guinea did they out-compete the
placental mammals and come to dominate. Bird life also flourished, in particular the ancestors of the great
passerine order that would eventually spread to all parts of the globe and account for more than half of all living
avian species. Among the fungi, the remarkable association between Cyttaria gunnii (one of the "golf-ball"
fungi) and its associated trees in the genus Nothofagus is evidence of that drift: the only other places where this
association is known are New Zealand and southern Argentina and Chile.
[16]
Animal groups such as macropods, monotremes, and cassowaries are endemic to Australia. There were three
main reasons for the enormous diversity that developed in animal, fungal and plant life.
While much of the rest of the world underwent significant cooling and thus loss of species diversity,
AustraliaNew Guinea was drifting north at such a pace that the overall global cooling effect was roughly
equalled by its gradual movement toward the equator. Temperatures in AustraliaNew Guinea, in other
words, remained reasonably constant for a very long time, and a vast number of different animal, fungal
and plant species were able to evolve to fit particular ecological niches.
Because the continent was more isolated than any other, very few outside species arrived to colonise, and
unique native forms developed unimpeded.
Finally, despite the fact that the continent was already very old and thus relatively infertile, there are
dispersed areas of high fertility. Where other continents had volcanic activity and/or massive glaciation
events to turn over fresh, unleached rocks rich in minerals, the rocks and soils of AustraliaNew Guinea
were left largely untouched except by gradual erosion and deep weathering. In general, fertile soils
produce a profusion of life, and a relatively large number of species/level of biodiversity. This is because
where nutrients are plentiful, competition is largely a matter of outcompeting rival species, leaving great
scope for innovative co-evolution as is witnessed in tropical, fertile ecosystems. In contrast, infertile soils
tend to induce competition on an abiotic basis meaning individuals all face constant environmental
pressures, leaving less scope for divergent evolution, a process instrumental in creating new species.
For about 40 million years AustraliaNew Guinea was almost completely isolated. During this time, the
continent experienced numerous changes in climate, but the overall trend was towards greater aridity. When
South America eventually separated from Antarctica, the development of the cold Antarctic Circumpolar
Current changed weather patterns across the world. For AustraliaNew Guinea, it brought a marked
intensification of the drying trend. The great inland seas and lakes dried out. Much of the long-established
broad-leaf deciduous forest began to give way to the distinctive hard-leaved sclerophyllous plants that
characterise the modern Australian landscape.
For many species, the primary refuge was the relatively cool and well-watered Great Dividing Range. Even
today, pockets of remnant vegetation remain in the cool uplands, some species not much changed from the
Gondwanan forms of 60 or 90 million years ago.
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Eventually, the AustraliaNew Guinea tectonic plate collided with the Eurasian plate to the north. The collision
caused the northern part of the continent to buckle upwards, forming the high and rugged mountains of New
Guinea and, by reverse (downwards) buckling, the Torres Strait that now separates the two main landmasses.
The collision also pushed up the islands of Wallacea, which served as island 'stepping-stones' that allowed plants
from Southeast Asia's rainforests to colonise New Guinea, and some plants from AustraliaNew Guinea to move
into Southeast Asia. The ocean straits between the islands were narrow enough to allow plant dispersal, but
served as an effective barrier to exchange of land mammals between AustraliaNew Guinea and Asia.
Although New Guinea is the most northerly part of the continent, and could be expected to be the most tropical
in climate, the altitude of the New Guinea highlands is such that a great many animals and plants that were once
common across AustraliaNew Guinea now survive only in the tropical highlands where they are severely
threatened by overpopulation pressures.
Humans first populated eastern Wallacea (including Timor, which at the time was separated from mainland
Sahul), the rest of Sahul, and the Bismarck Archipelago from Sunda about 45,000 years ago, by a founding
population estimated to have been at least several hundred, and having had relatively sophisticated water craft.
There was little subsequent population mixing between Wallacea and Sahul for about 30,000 years, and indeed
relatively little mixing between the north and south and the east and west of Sahul after the initial dispersal of
the population.
[17]
Outline of Australia
Pacific Islands
Paleoclimatology
Plate tectonics
^ Johnson, David Peter (2004). The Geology of
Australia. Port Melbourne, Victoria: Cambridge
University Press. p. 12.
1.
^ Keith Lewis; Scott D. Nodder and Lionel Carter
(2007-01-11). "Zealandia: the New Zealand
continent" (http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky
/OceanStudyAndConservation/SeaFloorGeology
/1/en). Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
Retrieved 2007-02-22.
2.
^ "Big Bank Shoals of the Timor Sea: An
environmental resource atlas"
(http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/reflib/bigbank/pages
/bb-04.html). Australian Institute of Marine Science.
2001. Archived (http://web.archive.org
/web/20060908082408/http://www.aims.gov.au/pages
/reflib/bigbank/pages/bb-04.html) from the original
on 8 September 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-28.
3.
^ Wirantaprawira, Dr Willy (2003). "Republik
Indonesia" (http://www.wirantaprawira.net/indon
/land.html). Dr Willy Wirantaprawira. Retrieved
2006-08-28.
4.
Australia (continent) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)
4 of 5 9/14/2014 4:36 PM
^ Lffler, Ernst; A.J. Rose, Anneliese Lffler &
Denis Warner (1983). Australia:Portrait of a
Continent. Richmond, Victoria: Hutchinson Group.
p. 17. ISBN 0-09-130460-1.
5.
^
a

b

c
Ballard, Chris (1993). "Stimulating minds to
fantasy? A critical etymology for Sahul". Sahul in
review: Pleistocene archaeology in Australia, New
Guinea and island Melanesia. Canberra: Australian
National University. pp. 1920.
ISBN 0-7315-1540-4.
6.
^ Allen, J.; J. Golson and R. Jones (eds) (1977).
Sunda and Sahul: Prehistorical studies in Southeast
Asia, Melanesia and Australia. London: Academic
Press. ISBN 0-12-051250-5.
7.
^ Filewood, W. (1984). "The Torres connection:
Zoogeography of New Guinea". Vertebrate
zoogeography in Australasia. Carlisle, W.A.:
Hesperian Press. pp. 11241125.
ISBN 0-85905-036-X.
8.
^ e.g. Flannery, Timothy Fridtjof (1994). The future
eaters: An ecological history of the Australasian
lands and people. Chatswood, NSW: Reed. pp. 42,
67. ISBN 0-7301-0422-2.
9.
^ Theroux, Paul (1992). The happy isles of Oceania:
Paddling the Pacific. London: Penguin.
ISBN 0-14-015976-2.
10.
^ Wareham, Evelyn (September 2002). "From
Explorers to Evangelists: Archivists, Recordkeeping,
and Remembering in the Pacific Islands". Archival
Science 2 (34): 187207. doi:10.1007/BF02435621
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2FBF02435621).
11.
^ Dawkins, Richard (2004). The ancestor's tale: A
pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin. p. 224. ISBN 0-618-00583-8.
12.
^ e.g. O'Connell, James F.; Allen, Jim (2007).
"Pre-LGM Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New
Guinea) and the Archaeology of Early Modern
Humans" (http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/joc
/32o_conn.pdf). In Mellars, P.; Boyle, K.; Bar-Yosef,
O. et al. Rethinking the Human Revolution.
Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research. pp. 395410.
13.
^ Barrett; Dent (1996). Australian Environments:
Place, Pattern and Process
(http://books.google.com.au
/books?id=9AUcU_35C9sC). Macmillan Education
AU. p. 4. ISBN 0732931207. Retrieved 13 June
2014.
14.
^ MG Audley-Charles, 1986, "TimorTanimbar
Trough: the foreland basin of the evolving Banda
orogen", Spec. Publs int. Ass. Sediment, 8:91102
15.
^ Korf, R.P. Cyttaria (Cyttariales): coevolution with
Nothofagus, and evolutionary relationship to the
Boedijnpezizeae (Pezizales, Sarcoscyphaceae).
pp. 7787 in K.A. Pirozynski & J. Walker [eds]
Pacific Mycogeography: a Preliminary Approach.
Australian Journal of Botany Supplementary Series
No. 10, 172 pp. (1983).
16.
^ http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/OC_A_2012.pdf 17.
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