Well, primates came along some millions of years ago, evolving into humans. So, yes.

If there were we would have to seriously redefine and reorganize or concepts of the history of this planet..even if there were civilizations before us, I don't think humans are ready and/orable to recognize it yet. We can't take our eyes off our cell phones long enough to 'see' something like that.

So it can be summed up as: "Well, maybe, but probably not, but thinking about it can be useful." There! I just saved all of you from having to read the article.

[sciencedaily.com]
neanderthals maybe?
and snytiger6 gives food for thought re: how to define civilization
also, the world was a pretty inhospitable place for a long time...

I think its probably not that simple. I think there have probably been lots of ages of sophisticated beings who have developed civilisations which have probably been wiped out. Its likely they failed to record their history because they believed they would last forever, we all do. Bottle necks in evolution would suggest that there has been a return to less developed technologies which reused and rebuilt over time. It would make sense to me

An interesting exercise. Despite the claims of the title, the article itself states:

(The authors) don’t believe the Earth once hosted a 50-million-year-old Paleocene civilization. But by asking if we could “see” truly ancient industrial civilizations, we were forced to ask about the generic kinds of impacts any civilization might have on a planet.

But isn't it fun to think of Silurians in our past?

It might depend on howyou define "civilization". Are bee, ant or termite colonies a civilization? I think by soem definitions they could be considered so. However, they woudl leave little, if anything for archeologists to discover.

I don't think any evidence, facts or data has ever been found to support this.