New Guinea
About New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second-largest island, with an area of 785,753 km2 (303,381 sq mi). It has the third-largest remaining rainforest globally, and the highest plant biodiversity of any island. Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the 150-kilometre wide Torres Strait, though both landmasses lie on the same continental shelf, and were united during episodes of low sea level in the Pleistocene glaciations as the combined landmass of Sahul. Numerous smaller islands are located to the west and east. The island's name was given by Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez during his maritime expedition of 1545 because of the perceived resemblance of the indigenous peoples of the island to those in the African region of Guinea.
On the show — 20 mentions total
In 1966, there were only 41 known specimens in the world. Then in 1969, we just found this habitat in New Guinea where they all live. Now there are tons of them.
from 535: No Such Thing As An Inside-Out Dolphin, 2024-06-13 at 00:54:09 · read transcript
Other times New Guinea came up
Geckos are wonderful. There are geckos that don't have legs that look like snakes. I would have thought that would have been the false gecko. Oh, cool, yeah, yeah. There are six families of geckos with no legs. They're all endemic to Australia and New Guinea. Right. Brilliant. They've got vestigial hindlands, apparently, they look a tiny bit like flaps. You can see these little bumps that come out.
No Such Thing As An Award-Winning Gecko, 2023-05-11 · listen
Yet the local people who live in the Amazon or in Guinea or whatever will know all of them and will know like what they can be used for. and this guy did a study in the Amazon North America and New Guinea and he made a list of 12,500 plant purpose pairings my God it must have taken a long time but it was so that's like a plant and then the purpose that it's useful pairings and he said 75% of them.
No Such Thing As A Magnetic Skateboard, 2022-05-20 · listen
He was massive in Hong Kong. He'd done, I think it was his fourth American film Enter the Dragon. That was really the film that made him really big and everyone loved him. He died a couple of weeks before the premiere, three weeks before the premiere, very, very young, very sadly in his early 30s. Yeah, hadn't been big at all before then. Then was this huge deal.
No Such Thing As A Shooting Star, 2024-10-17 · listen
Su-soc man means person with shoes and socks. Oh, look at you. Look at you, you're matching shoes. There you go. You'd fit right in. I didn't know that Papua New Guinea is the second-largest island in the world. I didn't know that either. It's massive. It depends what you count as an island, of course. Very true, yeah. If you count Eurasia as an island, I'm down to three immediately.
246: No Such Thing As The Worm Revolution, 2018-12-07 · listen
More places from this episode
535: No Such Thing As An Inside-Out Dolphin put 3 places on the map.
- Dunkirk · France
- Greek Island · United States
Coordinates: -6.0000, 142.0000