sentences:  He also showed that many extinct rhineurids cannot be justified as their own species and are instead synonyms of earlier named species, reducing the number of valid species from twenty-two to nine.For example, "Jepsibaena minor", "Rhineura amblyceps", "R. attenuatus" "R. minutus", and "R. wilsoni" are all synonyms of "Protorhineurna hatchetii", leaving "R. floridana" as the only species of "Rhineura".Since the late nineteenth century, paleontologists had been naming new species of extinct North American amphisbaenians on the basis of single fragmentary specimens that often preserved too few anatomical features to support their status as distinct species.