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ENTERPRISE - A researcher from the University of Alberta will visit a major fossil site south of Enterprise in August.

The site on the banks of the Hay River is notable for ichthyosaur fossils discovered in 1971 by a technician and graduate students from the university.

Now, Erin Maxwell, a post-doctorate fellow at the university, plans to look for more fossils from Aug. 14 to 24.

Maxwell said the site, just north of the Alberta-NWT border, hasn't been investigated since it was first discovered and studied in 1971.

"It will be interesting to see if there were more fossils coming out," she said.

The fossils found in 1971 were forgotten in boxes under a ping-pong table at a University of Alberta lab until 2002.

Next month's search for more fossils will be Maxwell's first visit to the site.

"I've done so much work on it, it will be interesting to finally see it," she said.

The ichthyosaur was a reptile resembling a dolphin, even though the two species are completely unrelated.

The creature, which was not a dinosaur, had a long snout, big eyes, dorsal fins, limbs with paddles at the end, and a tail with a big fin.

She said the site is very important.

"I would say it's very significant because it's from a time in the Earth's history where the fossil record of ichthyosaurs in North America is not very good," she said.

The fossils date from the Cretaceous period - about 110 million years ago.

Back then, the area was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, which stretched from the Mackenzie Delta to the Gulf of Mexico.