Message in a bottle : a tale of two Triassic temnospondyl (labyrinthodont) femora from Tasmania

In 1997 the senior author, while exploring the antique shops of Hobart, found in Suffolk Park Antiques an intriguing small, nineteenth-century, clear glass bottle. Labelled as "message in a bottle", it did indeed contain a note on a slip, cut from a visiting card, together with a wafer-thin, sub-triangular piece of dark, porous material (pl. 1). The handwritten note read "section shaft humerus labryinthodont, sandstone quarry, Hobart, 1856, Tas Museum".A further annotation, written at right angles to the preceding note, appears to read "Pro R.S.T 1898-9". Pro R.S.T. is an abbreviated reference to the Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1898-99.
This issue of the journal included a short note by WH. Twelvetrees and WF. Petterd describing and illustrating two labyrinthodont bones from Tasmania lodged in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) collection. Here we trace the history of the two temnospondyl (labyrinthodont) bones, review the significance of these specimens and propose an explanation as to how part of one specimen came to be in the Suffolk Park Antiques shop