Continent in Latin American countries, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece, where they are taught as a single continent. The criterion of a discrete landmass is completely disregarded if the continuous landmass of Eurasia is classified as two separate continents: Europe and Asia. Physiographically, Europe and South Asia are peninsulas of the Eurasian landmass. However, Europe is widely considered a continent with its comparatively large land area of , while South Asia, with less than half that area, is considered a subcontinent. The alternative view—in geology and geography—that Eurasia is a single continent results in a six-continent view of the world.
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