Abstract:Shoshonitic rocks have special characteristics of mineralogy and geochemistry, and important significance of geodynamic and mineralization. Tremendous progress about shoshonitic rocks has been made in recent years, however, some topics on shoshonitic rocks are still disputable, such as, expansion of its definition, existence of crustal source and discrimination index of intraplate setting. In this paper, we mainly introduce the current advances of the study on the shoshonitic rocks by data collecting and sorting. The main conlusions are followings: (1) As an independent rock series, it lacks unambiguous and effective discrimination indexes of petrology, mineralogy and geochemistry. Therefore, the relatively uniform standards need to be established urgently. (2) Shoshonitic rocks related to island arc are enriched in the large ion lithophile elements and light rare earth elements, with significant TNT abnormality. The shoshonitic rocks occurred in oceanic plate have typical characteristics of Ocean Island basalts, while those rocks related to continental intraplate have some features of Island Arc basalts or Ocean Island basalts. (3) Shoshonitic rocks with low and high silicon contents may be mainly derived from the mantle and crustal competent respectively. However, in most cases, they are origined from magma mixing.