Palearctic realm

The Palearctic is the world's largest biogeographic realm, spanning most of Europe and Asia north of the Himalayan foothills, along with North Africa, and covering an area of roughly 54 million square kilometers. Its reach extends into the Western Hemisphere at its edges, taking in Iceland, Portugal, Macaronesia, and Morocco in the west and Cape Dezhnyov in Chukotka in the east. The realm includes bioregions covering Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, North Africa, Arabia, and parts of Asia, with landscapes ranging from tundra in northern Russia and Scandinavia through vast taiga forests to temperate broadleaf and mixed forests further south, along with numerous rivers and lakes. The term originated in the nineteenth century when Philip Sclater identified the Palearctic as one of six terrestrial zoogeographic realms, a classification still used as the basis for zoogeographic study today.