Petri Dish could hold the beginning of life - of your pet who died, endangered animals, of extinct creatures, of the future of science itself.

Susanne Quick peers into the controversial world of cloning and its implications on this planet's progress.

Its' just another brown brick building in a suburban business park.

But Suite J at the Waunakee Business Center in Wisconsin, US, is about to turn in to the animal cloning debate's ground zero. Genetic Savings & Clone Inc. - the entrepreneurial outfit that introduced the first cloned pet cat to the world in December - has opened its doors.

The company's CEO, Lou Hawthorne, has promised that by year's end, a dog will be born here.

In the eight years since Dolly the sheep's birth was announced to the world, research into animal cloning has progressed in ways few deemed possible a decade ago.

Scientists have now cloned barnyard animals and endangered species. They've created cloned cows from frozen steak and cloned mice from cancer cells.

They've talked about resurrecting extinct creatures - such as woolly mammoths and Tasmanian tigers. And with the news last week that soft tissue from dinosaurs ha been discovered, re-creating these giant lizards does not seem so farfetched.

Despite the scientific excitement, creativity and ingenuity that have inspired and driven this research, cloning remains uncomfortable - even freakish - for many people.

Who and what are the clones? Are they healthy animals or deformed monsters? How many animals are sacrifice in the pursuit of me helalthy clone? And, in the end, what will it lead to?

As ethicists and scientists weigh the motivations for animal cloning - improving the food supply, fighting diseases, saving endangered animals - the arguments for and against cloning mutate and evolve along with the research advances.

That debate is continuing.