Halophilic archaeal strain YC89(T) was isolated from Yuncheng salt lake in Shanxi, China. Cells from strain YC89(T) were short rods, lysed in distilled water, stained Gram-negative and formed red-pigmented colonies on agar plate. Strain YC89(T) was able to grow at 25-50 A degrees C (optimum 37 A degrees C), at 1.4-4.8 M NaCl (optimum 2.6-3.1 M), at 0-1.0 M MgCl2 (optimum 0.3 M) and at pH 6.0-9.5 (optimum pH 7.5). The major polar lipids are phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol phosphate methyl ester, sulfated mannosyl glucosyl diether and two unknown glycolipids. 16S rRNA gene analysis revealed that strain YC89(T) was phylogenetically related to Halorientalis persicus D108(T) (95.6 % nucleotide identity) and H. regularis TNN28(T) (95.3 % nucleotide identity). The rpoB' gene similarities between strain YC89(T) and H. persicus IBRC-M 10043(T) and H. regularis TNN28(T) were 88.1 and 88.0 %, respectively. The DNA G+C content of strain YC89(T) was determined to be 61.3 mol%. The phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic properties suggested that strain YC89(T) (=CGMCC 1.12125(T) = JCM 18366(T)) represents a new species of Halorientalis, for which the name H. brevis sp. nov. is proposed.