Didn't the furry fandom exist back in the 1980s?

Technically yes. But, I personally see the whole thing starting in the early mid 90's. I kinda see it like the whole blues and rock thing, where rock evolved from blues. Even though they were closely related at the start rock has evolved so much now that its considered a genre of music. Basically what I'm saying is that when I started getting into furries, they were already known 'furries' in some places, as a sort of sub-culture. In the 80's I doubt that if you went up to a bunch of people and said "I'm a furry" no one would know what you're talking about. In the mid 90's though, you could tell 100 people that you're a furry, and I bet you that at least a few of would've probably at least heard of the term used in way other than to describe something with fur on it. Thats why I consider the start of furry sub-culture to have happened in the early mid 90's. When I officially considered myself a furry back around 2002, there was already a fairly good sized amount of people that were into it, but there wasn't really a dedicated site for it yet, at least not one that I could find anywhere, so that leads me to believe that this fandom was still fairly new. I'd say that the earliest that the whole furry 'thing' started would be in the very early 90's. I hope my rambling makes some sort of sense, lol.

Well I can say I think that one of the earliest recorded sites dedicated to furries be like yerf started in 98 or perhaps DolphinDreams was to where Narse and Athus posted early works of theirs.

I guess, I wasn't looking hard enough back when I first discovered furries, lol. oh well, I'm here now. I just regret that I didn't join FA when I first found it in around 2006

Well I did not discover the fandom till a friend showed me in like late 2005 or so myself, and that was on sites like the former yiffstar, fchan.us or lol.x4free. I found FA later like 07 or 08 by accident, and did not member here till 2011 so yeah, and I looked up furwiki to discover these older sites.
An to bad will not be seeing you at MFF.

yea, I wish I could be a MFF...maybe next year though!

Good hunting. With the MLP craze, everyone else has been forgotten. But there's plenty of Sally, Rogue, Krystal, and Renamon on e621.

True...but I still miss seeing it here on FA. oh well, I guess I was just lucky to witness the fun days of the renamon and krystal craze. :P