James Cook University's Professor Bill Laurance is confident new technology used by his research team will unearth "never-before-seen species" in the region's rainforest canopies.
"There's heaps of stuff in a rainforest that hasn't been discovered yet," he told AAP, "Any time you start looking in strange places like a canopy all kind of things pop up. It's one of the great biological frontiers left on the planet."
Prof Laurance is director of JCU's Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science (TESS), a group of about 160 scientists working across far north Queensland aiming to "reveal the secrets of the rainforest".
But he warned yowie enthusiasts shouldn't get their hopes up.
"There is a vanishing, small chance in my view that they exist," he said.
"For something that big and that conspicuous to go undiscovered is going to the fringes of reality.
"It would be a great story. Are you kidding? The scientist who discovers it would be made for life but there is a very tiny chance."
Prof Laurance does keep an open mind on what other secrets the region may hold after leading a 2017 expedition to Cape York in search of the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine.