The discovery of the new halophilic archaeon,
Halorutilus salinus
, representing a novel order, family, genus, and species within the class
Halobacteria
and phylum
Euryarchaeota
clearly enables insights into the microbial dark matter, expanding the current taxonomical knowledge of this group of archaea. The in-depth comparative genomic analysis performed on this new taxon revealed one of the first known examples of an
Halobacteria
representative coding the archaeal RuBisCO gene and with a streamlined genome, being ecologically successful in nature and explaining its previous non-isolation.