A bacterial strain designated 11N27(T) was isolated from an agricultural soil sample. Cells of this strain were Gram-reaction-variable, facultatively anaerobic, endospore-forming, white-pigmented, peritrichously flagellated and hydrolysed xanthine. The major fatty acids of strain 11N27(T) were anteiso-C15 : 0, iso-C16 : 0 and C16 : 0. The polar lipid profile contained phosphatidylethanolamine, two unknown phospholipids, two unknown aminolipids, one unknown aminophospholipid and two unknown polar lipids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain 11N27(T) was 50.3 mol%. MK-7 was the predominant respiratory quinone. meso-Diaminopimelic acid was the diagnostic diamino acid in the peptidoglycan. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that strain 11N27(T) was phylogenetically related to Paenibacillus mendelii C/2(T) (96.2% sequence similarity) and Paenibacillus sepulcri CMM 7311(T) (96.0%). The genotypic and phenotypic data showed that strain 11N27(T) could be distinguished from phylogenetically related species and that this strain represents a novel species of the genus Paenibacillus. The name Paenibacillus xanthinilyticus sp. nov. is proposed with the type strain 11N27(T)( = KACC 17935(T) = NBRC 109108(T)).