Both maps below show Puerto Rico highlighted. At 18° Mercator inflates Puerto Rico by only about 11%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Bahamas beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 18°, Puerto Rico 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.
Puerto Rico: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Puerto Rico | 9,100 km² | 10,087 km² | 1.1× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Puerto Rico at about 10,087 km². The truth is 9,100 km², a difference of 11% that school atlases carried for centuries.