of Sarcosuchus were similar to those goniopholodids like Sunosuchus and Goniopholis; they formed an uninterrupted surface that started in the posterior part of the neck up to the middle of the tail like is seen in Araripesuchus and other basal crocodyliforms, different from the pattern seen in living crocodiles, which present discontinuity between the osteoderms of the neck and body. Size A common method to estimate the size of crocodiles and crocodile-like reptiles is the use of the length of the skull measured in the midline from the tip of the snout to the back of the skull table, since in living crocodilians there is a strong correlation between skull length and total body length in subadult and adult individuals irrespective of their sex, this method was used by Sereno et al. (2001) for Sarcosuchus due to the absence of a complete enough skeleton. Two regression equations were used to estimate the size of S. imperator, they were created based on measurements gathered from 17 captive gharial individuals from northern India and from 28 wild saltwater crocodile individuals from northern Australia, both datasets supplemented by available measurements of individuals over in length found in the literature. The largest known skull of S. imperator (the type specimen) is long ( in the midline), and it was estimated that the individual it belonged to had a total body length of , its snout-vent length of was estimated using linear equations for the saltwater crocodile and in turn this measurement was used to estimate its body weight at . This shows that Sarcosuchus was able to reach a maximum body size not only greater than previously estimated but also greater than that of the Miocene Rhamphosuchus, the Late Cretaceous Deinosuchus and the Miocene Purussaurus according to current estimates at that time. However, extrapolation from the femur of a subadult individual as well as measurements of the skull width further showed that the largest S. imperator was significantly smaller than was estimated by Sereno et al. (2001) based on modern crocodilians. O’Brien et al. (2019) estimated the length of the largest S. imperator specimen at nearly and body mass at based on longirostrine crocodylians skull width to total length and body width ratio. The highest upper quartile reconstructed length and body mass for the specimen is and , respectively. Classification Sarcosuchus is commonly classified as part of the clade Pholidosauridae, a group of crocodile-like