Land masses lying on continental lithosphere and tectonic plates were intentionally excluded from the calculation.
If we are simply talking about countries, almost everyone knows which ones are among the largest. But the situation is different with islands, for this reason IFLScience Collected the largest and most unique land masses on Earth. However, it is important to note that continental land masses have been left out of the list, and therefore America, Antarctica and Australia are not included in it either.
Unsurprisingly, first place was taken by Denmark’s sovereign territory Greenland, whose main island has an area of 2,130,800 square kilometres, meaning it is about 23 times larger than Hungary. Despite its huge size, due to its cold climate, it is very sparsely populated, with only a few settlements along the coast. The island is inhabited by only 56 thousand people. The majority of Greenland’s population is Inuit, but a large minority is of European, primarily Danish, descent.
The second largest island in the world is New Guinea in Southeast Asia, with an area of 785,753 square kilometers, almost 8 and a half times the area of our country. The island is politically divided, with the eastern half of the island belonging to Papua New Guinea and the western half part of Indonesia. Incidentally, the New Guinea Plateau extends here, which includes Puncak Jaya, the highest peak in Oceania, with a height of 4884 metres.
Borneo comes in third place with a similar area of 748,168 square kilometers. More than 21 million people live on the island, but despite everything, biodiversity is also a feature of the region. According to some estimates, there are approximately 15,000 plant species, 3,000 tree species, 221 land mammal species, and 420 bird species.
In fourth place comes the only large island in Africa, Madagascar, with an area of 587,041 square kilometers. This means approximately 6 regions in Hungary. Finally, the Baffin Islands, located just 350 kilometers from Greenland, ranked fifth with an area of 507,451 square kilometers. Its population is also small, at only 13,000 people, most of whom are also Inuit.
