Extremal critically connected matroids

A connected matroid M is called a critically connected matroid if the deletion of any one element from M results in a disconnected matroid. We show that a critically connected matroid of rank n, n>=3, can have at most 2n-2 elements. We also show that a critically connected matroid of rank n on 2n-2 elements is isomorphic to the forest matroid of K"2, n-2.