Isso soa como a Estação Hawksbill por Robert Silverberg. É um romance de 1970, em que presos políticos são enviados para o período pré-cambriano por meio de uma máquina de viagem única no tempo.
Hawksbill Station is a penal colony in the pre-Cambrian era created by the authoritarian United States government, using time travel as a means to exile rebels and political dissidents into the past. The colony houses only male exiles (a female settlement supposedly exists later in the Silurian era), who are sent there as a "humane" alternative to execution. The machine only works one way, so the prisoners are hopelessly marooned in the past.