So has Denmark, which claims that the ridge is actually part of Greenland.
Normally the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf makes the final decision on continental margins.
But the commission isn't designed to settle conflicting claims, the University of Victoria's McDorman said.
"It is unlikely that the commission would have jurisdiction to deal with this," he said, "which would mean that it would fall to negotiation between the Russians, the Canadians, and the Danes."
Ownership of the seabed ultimately depends on its geology—"in simplistic terms, whether it is continental in nature," McDorman said.
Also, he noted, "there are ridges throughout the Arctic Ocean, and there have always been questions whether you can ride the ridge into the ocean as far as it goes."
Mini-Sub Science
International quibbles aside, ocean explorers are excited about the science the Russian mini-subs may have accomplished on the deep-ocean floor.
Diving beneath the ice poses unusual difficulties, said Christina Reed, a Seattle-based marine scientist and journalist who dived in one of the subs in the Atlantic in 2003.
When the mini-subs usually complete a dive, they simply ascend to the surface and let the mother ship come to them, Reed said.
Beneath the Arctic ice, however, the subs must come up through the same hole through which they descended.
"GPS [global position system] doesn't work underwater," Reed said. "So they have to use transponders [radios] to locate themselves."
And since the subs were diving for hours under the Arctic ice, Reed said, the Russian teams likely would have been exploring the remote deep-water world.
At that depth the seabed isn't exactly teeming with life, but neither is it totally barren. Reed compares it to a terrestrial desert, where life is sparse but interesting.
"This is very exciting," she said. "Regardless of what they find, it's making history."
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