One sunny spot in the southern hemisphere is both the smallest continent in the world and a country in its own right.
Spanning over 3 million square miles, Australia has just over 46 million residents, making it the second least populated continent, after Antarctica.
By contrast, Europe is just 0.8 milion square miles larger and takes up 7% of the world’s land, but it’s home to 748 million people according to Worldometer, nearly 16 times more populated than Australia.
The continent of Australia is sometimes mistaken with the region of Oceana, which includes New Zealand, Polynesia and other central and south Pacific islands, but this isn’t actually a continent.
The continent consists of the mainland of Australia home to 25 million people, the nation of Papua New Guinea and Tasmania, but New Zealand doesn’t fall under the traditional continent model.
New Zealand sits on its own tectonic plate, the Pacific Plate, while Australia rests on the Australian Plate so while both are in the same region of Oceania, they are considered separate in terms of the continent model.
To avoid confusion with the namesake of its mainland, Australia is also sometimes referred to as Sahul, Australinea, or Meganesia.
The continent with the lowest population is unsurprisingly the coldest place on earth, Antarctica. It’s most often used for research purposes to study geological, meteorological and oceanographic characteristics of Earth.
From one extreme to the other, Asia is the largest continent in terms of landmass and population. It’s over five times the size of Australia, and is home to 4.8 billion people according to Worldometer.
From the smallest to largest, here are the continent rankings by land mass:
- Australia (approx. 3 million square miles)
- Europe (approx. 3.8 million square miles)
- Antarctica (approx. 5.5 million square miles)
- South America (approx. 6.9 million square miles)
- North America (approx. 9.4 million square miles)
- Africa (approx. 11.6 million square miles)
- Asia (approx. 17.2 million square miles)