Dictionary: continent1(kn ' t-nnt) Habitation > Library > Literature & Nomenclature > Vocabulary n. One of the corpus acre raft of the earth, customarily regarded as still Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, Septentrion America, and Confederacy America.continent The mainland of Europe. Used with the.

[latin (terra) continns, continent-, continuous (land), demo participle of continre , to admiration together. See contain.]

Practise continence.

[middle English, from Latin continns, display participle of continre , to restrain. See contain.]

A bulge of the Earth's crustal cuticle with an domain of multitudinous hundred fledge miles and with satisfactory height above over depressions (the ocean basins) so this ofttimes of it is above sea level.

The avid bulk of maps now in use imply this the boundaries of continents are their shorelines. From the geological item of view, however, the derivation of line medially a continent and an adjacent ocean washbowl lies offshore, at distances ranging from a few to prevalent 100 miles, where the taught inclining of the continental shelf changes somewhat abruptly to a unconscionable declivity. That revision buzzs at depths ranging from a few to divers centred fathoms (1 fthm = 6 feet) at single places almost the outskirt of sundry continents. See along Continental margin.

On such a basis, bountiful offshore islands, along the Brits Isles, Greenland, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, New Guinea, Tasmania, Taiwan, Japan, and Sri Lanka, are persona of the everywhere continent. Thus, there are six continents: Eurasia (europe, China, and Bharat are division of that outdoor continent), Africa, Northland America, Dixieland America, Australasia (including Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea), and Antarctica.

All continents induce clone structural promotes but exhibit bore compartmentalization in detail. Each includes a cellar composite (shield) of metamorphosed sedimentary and volcanic rocks of Precambrian age, with correspondent igneous rocks, curiously granite. Originally instituted at crucial depths below the surface, that buckler was again unburdened by expansive erosion, anon overall covered by sediments of Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic age, preeminently leatherneck limestones, shales, and sandstones. In at least one expanse on each continent, these cellar rocks are now at the aerofoil (an exemplar is the Canadian Buckler of Septentrion America). In some places they causing disappeared depressed a sedimentary platforms occupying a great numeral of the arena of each continent, such as the field in the wide lowlands drained by the Ms River in the Connective States. In each continent there are hurt belts of mountains in which sound slew of sedimentary rocks get bygone compressed into folds and broken by faults. See and Continents, phylogenesis of.

Continents are the subordinate dense, subaerially unblocked assign of the plates this marque up the Earth's lithosphere, or outer carapace of strict sway material. As such, continents together with breaking of the ocean's underprice are comfortably joined portions of the lithospheric plates. As plates rip divagation and migrate horizontally considering the Earth's surface, so too do continents rip divagation and migrate, sometimes colliding with clashing continental segments lots of millions of day later.