Have you ever thought about fossils? It's cringe. If we are in a fantasy book / movie, then this is probably the dumbest and dumbest of the designs.
Judge for yourself: indeed, often in the plot there is a problem of how the heroes (together with the reader) can learn as clearly as possible what happened in the past, and here, the more lazy the author is, the more shamelessly he introduces the concept of a recording device. If this is a novel, then the people of the past will of course keep a diary, and if this is a movie, then, naturally, a video recorder will pop up somewhere according to the plot.
For example, as in the Soviet film "Purple Ball". Or, as the already lazy screenwriters of the American cinema "Prometheus" did, applying this technique as many as three times per film.
Well, judge for yourself, our case: obviously, absolutely plug-in technology - plants and animals of the past can "accidentally" turn into their own stone statues. This move clearly does not stand up to criticism. Nothing in this world is saved, and the continents and they irrevocably lose their past shape and location, and some indistinct relict radiation in our country is already considered to tell us a lot, and here you are: there was some kind of 3D printing there are twigs or critters from 150 million years ago, and also in HD! Please study filed.
You will of course excuse me for being tedious, but this part is clearly whipped up.