LONDON (Reuters) - A 500-year-old map which was the first to use the word "America" and the first to portray the earth as a globe sold for 545,600 pounds in London on Wednesday.

Auction house Christie's said the 1507 Martin Waldseemuller map was also the first to distinguish north and south America and the first to depict the Pacific Ocean.

One of four known examples, the map was discovered by a European man who went through his collection of old maps after reading about the subject in a newspaper.

The sale estimate had been 500,000 to 800,000 pounds.

A much bigger version of the map produced in 1515 and often referred to as "America's birth certificate" was bought by the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington DC for $10 million in 2003.

Experts view the Waldseemuller map as ground-breaking because before its publication the view of the world was dominated by the beliefs of the Ancient Greeks.

It was created by scholars, led by Waldseemuller, after they were given a French translation in 1505 of the voyages of Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

His accounts gave enough detail to allow the scholars to plot a new map to include the New World to the West.

They called the land mass "America" after Vespucci.