Methanogenic anaerobic archaea produce the largest amount of methane on Earth. Methane metabolism was thought to originate early in the evolution of the phylum Euryarchaeota, a notion that was challenged following the discovery of putative methane metabolism in the archaeal phylum Bathyarchaeota. Vanwonterghem et al. now report five near-complete genomes from population genomes that were recovered from anoxic environments with high methane flux. These genomes encode methyl-coenzyme M reductase genes that are divergent from known sequences, and the authors suggest that these archaea belong to a new phylum, which they term Verstraetearchaeota. Metabolic reconstruction revealed the presence of key genes that are associated with methylotrophic methanogenesis and fermentation processes.