Originally Posted by Correa Neto
Call me a close-minded radical denialist, but I would say zero.
Agreed. Actually finding a new species takes careful study of the known species, to the point where you can draw them more or less accurately from memory. Then you spend a lot of time figuring out where to look--examining habitats (or, in my case, outcrops), looking for where in the habitat to look, etc., based on knowledge of related species. Then you go to the site and take samples (photos, specimens, rocks). Then you go back to the lab and pour over the stuff until you can draw THAT stuff from memory. Then you compare what you've found with what you have, in excruciating detail. There's a reason I focus on drawing: I was trained that that's the way to really look at something. Sure, you can take a photo, but drawing it forces you to think about what you're seeing in much more fine detail, which is necessary for taxonomy. The line drawings in monographs are useful for interpretation, yes (I defy anyone to look at the photos of a Cambrian Explosion critter and reproduce the line drawings in the monographs), but they're also a tool for extremely accurate description.
The process is long, it's tedious, it requires a lot of effort, it requires you to read thousands of pages of the most arcane text anyone has ever even conceived of (seriously, scientists think this stuff is too tedious to put into regular journals), most of it occurs in stuffy offices where the most dangerous thing is the coffee maker (seriously, scientists get some REALLY weird ideas about coffee)--it's nothing like what a Bigfoot advocate would have you believe. You won't be trampsing through the woods with your buddies; you'll be spending evenings looking at photos and tracking down references. Frankly, almost everyone will find this sort of thing mind-numbingly boring. It takes a unique person to do taxonomy.
The rewards are far greater, though. The thing about focusing on reality is, the skills are transferable in almost every case. The skills you learn in examining species allow you to notice--and, more importantly, remember--nuances of morphology that most miss. Name a single cryptozoologist that has revised a single clade due to their research. In contrast, I can't name anyone who's named more than a handful of species that hasn't. Most revise taxa outside of the clade they work with--for example, a professor of mine that focused on decapod paleontology also developed a morphospace model for decapod evolution, revising our understanding of the mechanisms by which these animals evolved. Gould studied mollusks, and changed how we view evolution itself. You also get to have fun moments like I had yesterday, when you see something that to others is perfectly ordinary, and suddenly numerous connections click into place and you can see the history of the groups spread out before you.
That paragraph isn't off topic, really. Those clicks are fitting organisms into their evolutionary framework, allowing one to predict what organisms are possible. Cryptozoologists don't work that way--they assume something exists, then try to find evidence. A real taxonomist already HAS the evidence.
Think of it this way: Cryptozoologists are Barney Stinson. What you're asking is "Which of his pickup lines might be true?"
Originally Posted by Miss_Kitt
Of the true cryptids, I have to think that a whopping huge goanna (spelling?) in the Outback would be the most likely. The Aborigines claim there are big ones out there, or were in their grandfathers' time anyway. And I look at all those camels as a lot of meat with no apparent predators, and I wonder...
I'd put that in a different category, for two reasons. First, the Outback isn't actually all that well explored--the locals aren't exactly thrilled about us outsiders poking around (for very good reasons--look what happened last time!). So there's actually room for there to be undiscovered critters out there. Second, large goannas aren't exactly unlikely. It's completely implausible that a plesiosaur lived in a lake for...well, however long Loch Ness has been cut off, or for an African ape to be walking around the New World (outside of us, obviously). A large goanna, in an area that has lots of goannas? Sure. Add in the various environmental factors that can lead to increased lizard size (the Island Effect for one, though it applies more broadly than the name suggests), and yeah, sure, it's perfectly plausible. If I recall correctly it's happened before--giant lizards (not dinosaurs, but actual lizards, in so far as the term has any meaning anyway) have been found in the fossil record.