Continent Introductio", Waldseemüller noted that the earth is divided into four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa and the fourth part, which he named "America" after Amerigo Vespucci's first name. On the map, the word "America" was placed on part of South America. From the 16th century the English noun "continent" was derived from the term "continent land", meaning continuous or connected land and translated from the Latin "terra continens". The noun was used to mean "a connected or continuous tract of land" or mainland. It was not applied only to very large areas of land—in the 17th century, references were made to
Largest-scale trends in evolution 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 existed for a much longer period of time. However, there are theoretical and empirical problems with this claim. From a theoretical perspective, it appears that there is no reason to expect evolution to result in any largest-scale trends, although small-scale trends, limited in time and space, are expected