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The Langenberg Quarry near Bad Harzburg has yielded the first Jurassic stem therian mammal of Germany, recovered from Kimmeridgian (Late Jurassic) near shore deposits of a palaeo-island within the Lower Saxony Basin of the European archipelago. The new stem therian is represented by one lower and three upper molars.  Hercynodon germanicus  gen. et sp. nov. is attributed to the Dryolestidae, a group of pretribosphenic crown mammals that was common in western Laurasia from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. The new taxon is characterised by small size, a reduced cusp pattern in the upper molars lacking a metacone, and enhancement of the shearing crests paracrista and metacrista. Phylogenetic analysis identified  Hercynodon  gen. nov. as sister taxon of  Crusafontia  from the Lower Cretaceous (Barremian) of Spain. Both taxa belong to an endemic European clade of dryolestids, including also  Achyrodon  and  Phascolestes  from the earliest Cretaceous (Berriasian) of England. Despite its greater geological age,  Hercynodon  gen. nov. is the most derived representative of that clade, indicated by the complete reduction of the metacone. The discrepancy between derived morphology and geological age may be explained by an increased rate of character evolution in insular isolation. Other insular phenomena have earlier been observed in vertebrates from the Langenberg Quarry, such as dwarfism in the small sauropod  Europasaurus , and possible gigantism in the morganucodontan mammaliaform  Storchodon  and the pinheirodontid multituberculate mammal  Teutonodon  which grew unusually large.   Supplementary Information  The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00114-021-01719-z.

A derived dryolestid mammal indicates possible insular endemism in the Late Jurassic of Germany