The Earth's magnetic poles last permanently reversed about 780,000 years ago. The magnetic event that happened ~41,000-42,000 years ago is called the Laschamps excursion. An excursion is when the magnetic field gets very weak, becomes non-dipolar, but then returns to the original polarity that the field was before the excursion. Occasionally durning these excursions the field flips directions and becomes stable in the opposite direction. That did not happen for the Laschamps. Many of these excursions have occurred since the last reversal of the field.
The article you linked to is a bit woo-woo, especially with all the Douglas Adam's stuff and the number 42. The article did not link to the scientific paper, which is an interesting read. It seems to be open access, so check it out[1].
It’s worth googling images of swamp kauri if woodworking is your thing, the logs are truely massive.