Cross posting this here so hopefully it will get fixed.
As of 04Feb2009 this quest is still bugged. BUT....I know the problem! You cannot open Tharoff's Bones IF you have an Aura, Familiar, Pet etc active. CLICK THEM OFF and you can open/loot no prob. After MANY clearings and much forum-diving, i found this bug mentioned in an old bug report from 2008.
As always, SoE re-introduces so many old bugs when the "fix" stuff, and this is no exception. Get your hand bones now before they "fix" it again and then it will be many more months until someone re-figures it out again...
it is possible the bug is specific to having the Sokokor familar around, that is the only familiar that I use and i always have the model dismissed via the /pet get lost command