What is a continent?

Question

What is a continent?

Answer 1

continent is a principal landmasses.

Answer 2

The earth's land masses are divided into several large, continous landmasses. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, but seven areas are commonly regarded as continents – they are: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America

Answer 3

its a large landmass surronded by water and has extreme climate

eg middle east a desert india is tropical and japan is really cols all lie in asia

Answer 4

A continent is the part of land above the oceans of each tectonic plate. The plates with such land masses are:

North American plate

South American plate

African plate

Australian plate

Antarctic plate

Eur-asian plate

Indian [sub] plate.

However, by international convention [read aggreement] the politically correct continents are:

North America, South America, Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and Antarctica.

Not every tectonic plate has land above ocean level, this is why Antarctica IS a continent while there is no such continent as "Arctica".  Anything solid near the north pole is simply ice, not land.

Answer 5

one of the large landmasses of the earth

Answer 6

One of those answers is unfortunately misleading:

<<The plates with such land masses are...>>

Continents don't generally sit snuggly on one tectonic plate.  Asia, for example, is made up of many individual plates that have been compressed together.

Answer 7

A continent is a way the ancient people had of dividing up the world. It is rather arbitrary, in that some large islands have exactly the same features as continents.

The traditional five continents were:

Europe

Asia

Africa

America

Australia

Note that America was considered to be one continent while Europe and Asia were two. They didn't know about Antarctica.

The modern six continents, based on geological grounds, are:

North America

South America

Eurasia

Africa

Australia

Antarctica

Greenland is considered to be part of North America although it should really be a separate continent. Similarly, Madagascar and New Zealand have all the features of a continent other than size.

Answer 8

It is a land mass that is very large and "independent", the continents are: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica.