Queen Elizabeth Islands

Queen Elizabeth Islands, northern part of the Arctic Archipelago, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, N Canada. Ellesmere Island (the largest), the Parry group (Melville, Bathurst, Devon, Prince Patrick, and Cornwallis islands), and the Sverdrup group (Axel Heiberg, Ellef Ringnes, Amund Ringnes, and many smaller islands) are found there. The islands are underlain by oil-bearing rock; extensive drilling has been under way since the early 1960s. The British explorer Sir William Parry explored (1819–20) many of the islands, and they were known (until 1954) as the Parry Islands.

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Queen Elizabeth Islands

Island group, northern Canada. Part of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, it comprises all the islands north of latitude 74°30′ N, including the Parry and Sverdrup island groups. The islands, the largest of which are Ellesmere, Melville, Devon, and Axel Heiberg, have a total land area of over 150,000 sq mi (390,000 sq km). Probably first visited by the Vikings c. AD 1000, they were partially explored (1615–16) by English navigators William Baffin and Robert Bylot. The islands, which are administratively split between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, were named in 1953 to honour Queen Elizabeth II.