- The country Papua New Guinea occupies the east portion of the island called New Guinea
- The island of New Guinea was named for the African country of Guinea
- The interior of New Guinea is so densely forested and topographically forbidding that the island’s local peoples remained isolated from each other for millennia
- Papua New Guinea is one of the few regions close to the equator that experience snowfall, which occurs in the most elevated parts of the mainland
- Linguistically, the people of Papua New Guinea are among the most diverse in the world, with more than 6 million people speaking more than 850 languages
- The world’s only known poisonous bird, the Hooded Pitohui (Pitohui dichrous), is native to Papua New Guinea
