Two extremely halophilic archaeal strains, HT40T and LN261T, were isolated from salt crystal samples collected from the Dingyuan Salt Mine in Anhui, China. Strain HT40T was found to possess two copies of the 16 S rRNA gene (rrnA and rrnB), while only one copy was detected in strain LN261T. Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16 S rRNA gene sequences revealed that the rrnA and rrnB genes of HT40T showed high sequence similarities with Halovenus aranensis EB27T (94.73