Continent Continent A continent is one of several very large landmasses of the world. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven regions are commonly regarded as continents. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, they are: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Geologically, the continents largely correspond to areas of continental crust that are found on the continental plates. However, some areas of continental crust are regions covered with water not usually included in the list of continents. Zealandia is one such area (see submerged continents below). Islands are frequently grouped with
Largest-scale trends in evolution not yet been empirically confirmed. Evolutionary theory might not predict largest-scale trends, but there may be such trends nonetheless. McShea (1996) looks at the empirical evidence for a trend towards increasing complexity in Metazoan fossils. He concludes that the evidence is not decisive and further investigation is required. Largest-scale trends in evolution The history of life on Earth seems to show a clear trend; for example, it seems intuitive that there is a trend towards increasing complexity in living organisms. More recently evolved organisms, such as mammals, appear to be much more complex than organisms, such as bacteria, which have