It is only a mystery if you start from the wrong starting place. By assuming the Ruling Theorem that life evolved instead of being created, then explaining the observations will always remain a mystery.
No wonder the author then states:
“The timelines are murky. So are the reasons. And fossil evidence from most of the history of life simply doesn’t exist.”
Did you catch that admission? Fossil evidence does not exist! They acknowledge that they have no observations to support their concept. What fossil evidence do we have? We have stromatolites. Stromatolites are reportedly the oldest fossils, formed by algae secreting a silicone glue-like substance that forms rocks. One stromatolite fossil was classified as the oldest fossil in the world, around 3.7 billion years old. Well, that was until recently when the age was reduced 98% to just a mere 70 million years old. What was the observation that caused this huge reduction of 3 billion 630 million years? They found another fossil in the same layer which could not have evolved into existence until then. So, the rock is aged by the fossil and the fossil is aged by evolutionary assumptions but not observations.
Now that’s cutting-edge science! Creation Research.