I agree with your sentiment but the article is badly written and misleading. It's not really controversial that there was photosynthesis at the time, it's regar

I agree with your sentiment but the article is badly written and misleading. It's not really controversial that there was photosynthesis at the time, it's regarded as widely accepted fact among experts. Also even before the GOE, there was likely anoxygenic photosynthesis, which still exists today in some very primitive organisms. I'm not sure if there's fossil evidence for those going all the way back but to be honest some of that science is questionable to begin with. We're talking about extremely small particles they claim to identify as fossilized bacteria. There are stromatolite colonies that still exist today, in Australia for example. When students are taught about the history of earth, they're taught such cyanobacteria were among the first if not THE first to produce oxygen en masse through photosynthesis. This was never based on fossil finds but on other evidence. So the paper isn't anything groundbreaking, it's another piece in the puzzle if we accept their images show fossilized thylakoids.