Continents for a small world

[bartmoss]

The strips of land sound cool, and since that is possible (see waldronates link), you can get away with it. Kinda doubt it would work on an earthlike world in a hard-scifi setting, but hey...

As for number and size of continents, if the planet is geologically active (i.e. plate tectonics) then it will change over time. Or in other words, pick whatever you like and see if you can explain the layout with plates. If yes, you are golden. If not, you can still use them and just fudge the facts...

[Hai-Etlik]

The strips of land sound cool, and since that is possible (see waldronates link), you can get away with it. Kinda doubt it would work on an earthlike world in a hard-scifi setting, but hey...

As for number and size of continents, if the planet is geologically active (i.e. plate tectonics) then it will change over time. Or in other words, pick whatever you like and see if you can explain the layout with plates. If yes, you are golden. If not, you can still use them and just fudge the facts...

The best theory for the origin of Iapetus's ridge does pretty much preclude habitability for terrestrial life. The world has to have tide locked relatively late, after having a chance to develop rings. When it tide locks, the rings are tidally braked out of orbit and land on the equator. Tide lock is not conducive to habitability, and it's probably going to have to be a distant moon of a gas giant with, which means it's probably outside the habitable zone, and quite likely to be subjected to nasty radiation from the giant's magnetosphere. The degree of magic needed to make all of that habitable probably isn't any more than to just make a ring of land around the equator by fiat. Still, it might make for an interesting creation myth about a great ring of cloud falling into the sea to form the land.