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Definitions and facts

To: David James <>
Subject: Definitions and facts
From: Dave Torr <>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:32:49 +1100
It's nice to know that Wikipedia is confused! Actually if you read their
article they state "As a cultural construct, the concept of a continent may
go beyond the continental shelf to include oceanic
islands<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island#Oceanic_islands>and
continental fragments" which would allow for the inclusion in Asia.
They
also make it fairly clear that there is no universal agreement about
continents, how many there are and what is included, so one can probably
find as many authorities for including Christmas I in Asia as one can for
excluding it! Seems to be almost as confusing a subject as taxonomy :-)

On 18 January 2011 10:48, David James <> wrote:

> Hi Gentlemen,
>
> David, both Cocos and Christmas are oceanic Islands. That means that they
> arose from and sit over oceanic plates, and have never been connected to any
> continental land masses. Therefore they are not part of any continent. They
> may be close to Asia, but they are simply not a geological part of Asia
> (and Cocos is not so close to Asia anyway). I suspect that wikepedia would
> be confused about the definition of continents because of the difficulty in
> identifying a universal boundary between Asia and Europe, or some other
> reason that is irrelevant to the definition of oceanic islands. Whatever.
>
> <>
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