https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nek7ed/dinosaurs-in-space-history-fiction

Two subjects, so rich in visual splendor and childish wonder, that have been the most reliable gateways to science for generations. Dinosaurs, with their exotic shapes and sizes, are powerful manifestations of deep time. Deep space—the universe beyond Earth, with its promise of discovery and adventure—has beckoned to humans for millennia.

But because dinosaurs were very much confined to Earth—a limitation that was central to their doom—it would seem preposterous to imagine them as spacefaring creatures. And yet, as chaos theorist Ian Malcolm put it in Jurassic Park, life finds a way (at least in fiction).