Well this is talking about 200,000 years before the explosive emergence of life on Earth. Before this discovery it was thought that there was much less oxygen a

Well this is talking about 200,000 years before the explosive emergence of life on Earth. Before this discovery it was thought that there was much less oxygen at that time (the Neoproterozoic era according to the article). And that life had to wait until more oxygen came along before it could happen. Now they are basically saying the oldest fossils we have found are probably not the oldest we could find. Time to look for older signs of life!