__NOTOC__ Sahul (), also called Sahul-land, Meganesia, Papualand and Greater Australia, was a paleocontinent that encompassed the modern-day

landmass A landmass, or land mass, is a large region or area of land. The term is often used to refer to lands surrounded by an ocean or sea, such as a continent or a large island. In the field of geology, a landmass is a defined section of continen ...

es of mainland Australia,

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

, and the Aru Islands. Sahul was in the south-western

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

, located appropriately north to south between the

Equator The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can al ...

and the 44th parallel south and west to east between the 112th and the 152nd meridians east. Sahul was separated from Sunda to its west by the Wallacean Archipelago. At its largest, when ocean levels were at their lowest, it was approximately in size. After the last Ice Age global temperatures increased and sea levels gradually rose, flooding the land bridge and separating mainland Australia from New Guinea and Tasmania. New Guinea was separated from the Australian mainland approximately 8,000 years ago, and Tasmania approximately 6,000 years ago. Sahul hosted a large variety of unique fauna that evolved independently from the rest of the world. Most notably nearly all mammals on Sahul were

marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a ...

s including a range of browsers, burrowers, scavengers and

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...

s; bats and rodents represented the only

placental mammal Placental mammals ( infraclass Placentalia ) are one of the three extant subdivisions of the class Mammalia, the other two being Monotremata and Marsupialia. Placentalia contains the vast majority of extant mammals, which are partly distinguish ...

s. It is estimated humans first colonised Sahul between 45,000 and 60,000 years ago, making the ocean crossing from Sunda through Wallacea. From Sahul humans spread throughout

Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...

. The name Sahul is used by archeologists, whilst the name Meganesia tends to be used by zoogeographers. The name Greater Australia has been used, but it has been criticised as "cartographic imperialism" because it places greater emphasis upon what is now Australia at the expense of New Guinea.

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* * * * * * * * Australia (continent) Continents Historical continents Oceania Asia-Pacific Pacific Ocean Southern Ocean Indian Ocean {{Geology-stub

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