Is Europe really a "continent" in the geological sense of the word?
138154
No....Thare are only 5 continents when u look at at globally geographically through geographical time.\n\n1. North and South America\n2. Africa\n3. Eurasia \n4. Australia\n5. Antartica
801024
The continents are divided based on the geological and geographical locations. We have seven continents on our earth. Viz., Asia, North America, Africa, Australia, Antartica, Europe & South America.
334456
Australia was considered a continent long before tectonic plates were known, and before anyone had any appreciation of different flora and fauna-remember, it was considered a continent prior to any real investigations into the interior of Africa or S America.  The islands of Madagascar and New Guinea also have unique ecosystems, but are not considered continents.  The decision to call Australia a continent rests completely on the opinion of mapmakers at the time, based on size only.  There are no set rules as to what is considered a continent, ocean, bay, gulf, sea, lake, etc-Just human arbitrary decision.
1081316
The reponse is related to plate tectonics. The earth crust is composed of a larger number of plates that float, very slowly of course, over the liquid interior. Continents therefore move relative to each other. When two plates meet, generally one moves under the other and it is here that we find mountains and volcanoes.\n\nWhat relation with oceans? Well, between some of the plates there is an upwelling of new magma, new crust. This is for instance the case in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The new crust needs room and pushes the plates on the left and right away: the Americas are moving to the west, while Europe and Africa are moving to the east. \n\nOceans (ah, at last!) are watermasses in which such upwelling of fresh crust takes place. An ocean therefore is partly in two or more different plates. On the other hand, seas are bodies of water that are on one continental plate only, or on two plates were no new crust is formed.\n\nHere is a pictures of the different continental plates:\n http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plates_tect2_en.svg
273367
Definition of location is where it is.  Africa is a continent.
180789
Pangea is a theoretical super-continent that existed millions of years ago and eventually broke up through platetechtonics to form the seven continents. I know old Albert had a few years under his belt, but not that many.
997624
How many continents are on the earth?\nA continent is one of several major land masses on the earth. There is no standard definition for the number of continents but you'll commonly find that the numbers six or seven are used. By most standards, there are a maximum of seven continents - Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Most students in the U.S. are taught that there are seven continents.\n\nIn Europe, many students are taught about six continents, where North and South America is combined to form a single America. Thus, these six continents are Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, and Europe.\n\nMany geographers and scientists now refer to six continents, where Europe and Asia are combined (since they're one solid landmass). Thus, these six continents are Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America.
850981
Europe and Asia are really one big continent Eurasia.\n\nEurasia and Africa are joined at Suez and so could be considered a single land mass if we ignore the man-made Suez Canal\n\nLikewise North and South America are a single land mass.  The  Panama Canal is even less of a division since it rises above sea level on locks.\n\nOnly Australia and Antarctica are completely isolated continents
1101902
The continents are the great land masses of the earth. There are seven continents on Earth now: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. \nThere are seven continents on Earth now. \nAsia and Europe are not separate land masses. They are divided by the Ural Mountains. \n\nThere are no countries in Antarctica. The U.S. and many other countries operate science stations there, but no nation owns the land. \n\nSee maps and much more in\nhttp://www.enchantedlearning.com/geography/continents/
98865
It was once thought that land on earth is stationary and that the continents had always been their current shape, even though they may have been covered by more water.\n\nMore recently however, it has been discovered that the continents were actually all one mass of land and at one point separated, floating apart on sheets of plate tectonics.  \n\nProof came quickly.  It is now easy to see the east coast of South America fitting into west Africa for instance.  Bones of related land-dwelling creatures were also found on the coastlines of the two distant continents.
1019097
While there is no set boundary on what is considered Northern Europe and what is considered Southern Europe - there are a few things that might easily define them:\n\nSouthern Europe is more centered on the Mediterranean Sea as its main water body (and rivers flow toward it, and can be culturally defined by groups that are based off of Mediterranean cultures (including Greek, Roman, etc.)\n\nNorthern Europe is more oriented towards the North Sea/Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean as its main water body (rivers in these countries flow toward it), and can be culturally defined by groups that were not part of Mediterranean cultures (like the Germanic tribes, Magyars, etc.)\n\nSo what countries are oriented toward the Mediterranean AND the Atlantic/North Sea/Baltic Sea? France, and Spain. But Spain's cultural influence is nearly all Mediterranean-centric (Roman and Islamic Empires) and France has a cultural heritage that fits both Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean cultures - Romans, and Franks. Some of the landlocked nations of central Europe - Switzerland and Austria can also fit into possibly being both Northern and Southern, but in general, Austria is seen as more Northern because of its cultural connections to Germanic groups as opposed to Greco-Roman culture. Switzerland is rather unique - their official languages are German (indicating northern, Italian and French (indicating southern Roman roots) and Romansh, their own language (but only spoken by 1% of Swiss). But since they were never really part of the Roman Empire, they might not be considered Southern.\n\nSo France is the best answer, from a cultural and physical geographic point of view.
1070937
USA:\n9,631,418 km²\n3,718,711 sq mi  \n\nEurope:\n10,390,000 km²\n4,010,000 sq mi\n\nI guess if you subtract GB from Europe, it will still be larger than USA\n\np/s: nem0nem, the area of europe that you gave is not continental europe but the total area of political boundary of countries in europe. sontinental europe means the size of europe itself, and is stated in wikipedia as 4,010,000 sq mi.nevertheless, I'm not quite sure whether the questions asks continental USA as in continental north america or just the USA.but anyways, the real answer to the question is:\n"Continental Europe is slightly larger than USA, but Continental North America is larger than Continental Europe."
388304
The Appalachians were & are also some of the oldest orogenies.\n\nTwo others are the Alps in Europe & the Rockys in Western US & Canada
662695
You are right. It can be an extension of Asia because there is no real delineation between Asia and Europe, like Africa, Americas and Australia. We can as well call it Eurasia. Whaddya say?
940720
EUROPE:/ EUROPA\n"In Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus in bull form and taken to the island of Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. For Homer, Europa was a mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation. Later Europa stood for mainland Greece and by 500 BC its meaning was extended to lands to the north."\n\nAFRICA:\n"The name Africa came into Western use through the Romans, who used the name Africa terra - "land of the Afri" (plural, or "Afer" singular) - for the northern part of the continent, as the province of Africa with its capital Carthage, corresponding to modern-day Tunisia.\n\nThe origin of Afer may either come from:\n\nthe Phoenician `afar, dust; \nthe Afri, a tribe-possibly Berber-who dwelt in North Africa in the Carthage area; \nthe Greek word aphrike, meaning without cold (see also List of traditional Greek place names); \nor the Latin word aprica, meaning sunny. \nThe historian Leo Africanus (1495-1554) attributed the origin to the Greek word phrike (meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the negating prefix a-, so meaning a land free of cold and horror. But the change of sound from ph to f in Greek is datable to about the first century, so this cannot really be the origin of the name.\n\nEgypt was considered part of Asia by the ancients, and first assigned to Africa by the geographer Ptolemy (85 - 165 AD), who accepted Alexandria as Prime Meridian and made the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge."\n\nASIA:\n"The word Asia entered English via Latin from Ancient Greek, first attested in Herodotus, where it refers to Asia Minor, or for the purposes of the Persian Wars, to the Persian Empire as opposed to Greece and Egypt. Homer knows a Trojan ally named Asios, son of Hyrtacus, a ruler over several towns, and also describes a marsh as 461).\n\nThe Greek term was likely from Assuwa, a 14th century BC confederation of states in ancient Anatolia. Hittite assu- "good" is a likely element in that name. Elamites numeous in the east called themselves As, and at least one Aryan people on the central Eurasian steppes called themselves Asi. Alternatively, the ultimate etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word asu, which means "to go out" or "to rise", referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East. Compare to this the suggestion for the etymology of Europe from Semitic erebu "to set". The motives for the names of Asia and Europe would thus mirror each other, much like the terms orient and occident (the names Anatolia and Levant likewise signify "sunrise"). This suggestion is widely quoted, but it suffers from the fact that Anatolia from an Akkadian or generally Semitic perspective does not lie in the east."\n\nTHE AMERICAS:\n"The earliest known use of the name America for the continents of the Americas dates from 1507. It appears on a globe and a large map created by the German cartographer Martin WaldseemÃŒller in Saint-DiÃ©-des-Vosges. An accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, explains that the name was derived from the Latinized version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form, America, as the other continents all have Latin feminine names. \nA few alternative theories regarding the continents' naming have been proposed, but none of them have any widespread acceptance. One alternative first proposed by a Bristol antiquary and naturalist, Alfred Hudd, was that America is derived from Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol, who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of discovery from England to Newfoundland in 1497. Supposedly, Bristol fishermen had been visiting the coast of North America for at least a
632232
Science explains that the world used to look more like a place called "Pangea", where all of the continents were connected. Over billions of years, the continents started to separate until they were in their present state.\n\nLook up "Pangea" for more information.
356276
Yes, unless you consider the Indian subcontinent to be a separate continent.