New Guinea

New Guinea is the second-largest island in the world, covering about 785,753 square kilometres in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It lies in Melanesia and is separated from Australia by the 150-kilometre-wide Torres Strait, although both landmasses share one continental shelf and were joined as the combined landmass of Sahul during the low sea levels of the Pleistocene glaciations. The island holds the third-largest remaining rainforest on Earth and the highest plant biodiversity of any island. Its eastern half is the main land mass of Papua New Guinea, while the western half, known as Western New Guinea, belongs to Indonesia and is organised into six provinces. Port Moresby and Jayapura are its two major cities. A Spanish explorer named it in 1545 because its indigenous peoples seemed to resemble those of the African region of Guinea.