Two British scientists are heading to Ellesmere Island to continue research aimed at unlocking the geological origins of the Arctic.

Geologists Helen Smyth and Stephen Rippington of the Cambridge Arctic Shelf Program at Cambridge University are collecting samples and making observations at Rannaes Peninsula on the southwest coast of Ellesmere Island.

"Our main aim, working in the Arctic, is to try and reconstruct the Arctic puzzle," Smyth told CBC News.

Smyth said there is only a preliminary understanding of the geology in the far reaches of the Arctic.

For example, she said, the Arctic has shifted over millions of years to create modern land masses, but little is known about how and where those shifts took place.

"If you try and visualize north of Ellesmere Island, where you have today the Arctic Ocean, maybe 160 million years ago that ocean didn't exist and there was a land mass there," she said.

The Cambridge Arctic Shelf Program is a non-profit UK-based charitable trust that is funded by the oil and gas industry to conduct "geological research in prospective hydrocarbon basins," according to the program's website.

"One of the things we're trying to understand is, for example, mountain building," Rippington said. "To some extent, that may still be going on today in northern Ellesmere Island."

Smyth said she already has some preliminary data from field work her team conducted around Lake Hazen in Quttinirpaaq National Park.

"We're able to correlate units we see at Lake Hazen to elsewhere in Ellesmere Island, and over towards Svalbard and into Russia," she said.

The two geologists plan to publish their research in academic journals once it's complete.