Both maps below show Palau highlighted. At 7° Mercator inflates Palau by only about 2%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Taiwan beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 7°, Palau sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
Palau: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Palau | 459 km² | 466 km² | 1.02× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Palau at about 466 km². The truth is 459 km², a difference of 2% that school atlases carried for centuries.