In this paper, the authors provide a case study of the Cenozoic basalts in Shandong Province, East China, to discuss the genesis of continental basalts. The results show that the parallel volcanic belts of Shandong be attributed to the plume activity and the recycled lower continental crust be important components of the plume. Geochemically, basanites and nepheninites of the late small and isolated volcanoes share many signatures with the carbonatite, e.g. the depletion of K, Pb, Zr, Hf, Ti in the primitive mantle-normalized grams. Therefore, the authors conclude that their mantle sources have been carbonated recently.