By around 13, 000 years ago the sea level was only lower than the present day, and corals began to surround the hills of the coastal plain, which were, by then, continental islands.
22.
"' The geography of New Caledonia "'( " Nouvelle-Cal�donie " ), an overseas collectivity of France located in the subregion of Melanesia, makes the continental island group unique in the Allied Forces during the War in the Pacific.
23.
He divided continental islands into two separate classes depending on whether they had recently been part of a continent ( like Britain ) or much less recently ( like Madagascar ) and discussed how that difference affected the flora and fauna.
24.
These effects are important because they have been used to explain how migrants to North America from Beringia were able to travel southward during the deglaciation process due purely to the exposure of submerged land between the mainland and numerous continental islands.
25.
Madagascar's high species richness and endemicity are attributed to its long isolation as a continental island : Once part of the Gondwana supercontinent, Madagascar separated from continental Africa around 150 160, and from the Indian subcontinent 84 91 million years ago ( dispersal was also admitted.
26.
From the perspective of geology or physical geography, " continent " may be extended beyond the confines of continuous dry land to include the shallow, submerged adjacent area ( the continental shelf ) and the islands on the shelf ( continental islands ), as they are structurally part of the continent.
27.
Of the continents and continental islands of the opposite hemisphere, the only one named in the series is the continent of "'Gah "', mentioned in " Transit to Scorpio " as a place of distasteful sexual customs ( an obvious dig at another sword and planet series, the Gor series of John Norman ).
28.
Mainland Australia, especially the eastern Qld and NSW rainforests and the monsoon tropics, harbours the global centre of " Alectryon " species diversity, having 15 species, 12 of them West Papua, Australia and all of their continental islands, including the Torres Strait Islands, known collectively in biogeography as the Sahul continent, lives the even greater diversity and endemism of 21 and 19 species, respectively.
