[ClearCase_guy]

nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean to shallow waters, helping to foster new life forms

Was the evolution speeding right along in the deep ocean -- you know, where all the nutrients already were? Or was that also pretty much a steady state? If the nutrients in the ocean weren't leading to an explosion of new life forms there, then why did those nutrients, once released from the deep, lead to an explosion of new life on land?

This is all conjecture. Science has become the art of interesting guessing.

[Moonman62]

I think anyone who has done some scuba diving could give you some insight.

[Olog-hai]

Not real science, of course. And the Bible talks about this kind of dissembling:

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: / Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. …

— 1 Timothy 6:20-21

The Greek word here used for “science” is gnosis (also translated knowledge, but cognate with Latin scientia whereas Greek episteme properly translates as “art”).

[JimSEA]

The invasion of the land was initiated by plants. Next, after millions of years, came the insects. The scorpion fossils show a creature very similar in appearance to the ocean dwelling ancestor as well as the modern scorpion. The Chordata that came later have left many fossils of early amphibians, amphibian like fish and lung fish.

[GeronL]

Good question

[BroJoeK]

ClearCase_guy: "This is all conjecture.
Science has become the art of interesting guessing."

In scientific terminology, a "fact" is a strongly confirmed observation -- we know it's true because we've seen it, measured it, etc.
For examples, fossils are facts, and so is DNA.

The words "hypothesis" and "theory" describe explanations for those facts.
"Hypothesis" is a testable explanation -- testable by predictions which are confirmed or falsified through experiments or discoveries of new facts.
If a hypothesis gets confirmed, it's promoted up to "theory", but if falsified, then it remains as a discredited hypothesis.

Doubtless, the new facts this article reports on are evidence of suddenly higher oxygen levels during the Cambrian, and a different interpretation as to the splitting apart of Gondwanaland.
Others have also noted the Cambrian explosion came relatively soon after the melting of "snow-ball Earth", so now we are talking about, ahem, global warming and atmospheric pollution with, well, oxygen.

So don't tell me "climate change" is some kind of new phenomenon -- until they find fossilized SUVs from back then! ;-)