Galileo's missing fingers found in jar

Two fingers cut from the hand of Italian astronomer Galileo nearly 300 years ago have been rediscovered more than a century after they were last seen, an Italian museum director said Monday.

They were purchased recently at an auction by a person who brought them to the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, suspecting what they were, museum director Paolo Galluzzi said.

Three fingers were cut from Galileo's hand in March 1737 when his body was moved from a temporary monument to its final resting place in Florence, Italy. The last tooth remaining in his lower jaw was also taken, Galluzzi said.

Two of the fingers and the tooth ended up in a sealed glass jar that disappeared sometime after 1905.

There had been "no trace" of them for more than 100 years until the person who bought them in the auction came to the museum recently.

"I was very curious," the Galluzzi said.

"There is a description from 1905 by the last person to have seen these objects. It provides us with a very detailed description of the container and the contents inside," Galluzzi explained.

The jar "matches in every minute detail" the description, Galluzzi said.

But by the time the urn went on sale, the label saying what was inside had been lost, so the sellers and the auctioneer did not realize its significance.

"Everybody knew there were fingers and a tooth, but the people preparing the auction didn't know it was Galileo," Galluzzi said.

Read the full article here: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/23/galileo.fingers/index.html

Special thanks to Andrew Hughes for pointing this out