Abstract Starting in the early 1950s, palaeontologists began to discover a wide range of Cretaceous terrestrial fossils in the Laiyang, Qingshan and Wangshi groups of the Jiaolai Basin, which resides in the eastern part of the Shandong Peninsula of northern China. Significant specimens from these deposits include various dinosaur eggs, footprints and fossils, including hadrosauroids, tyrannosaurids and ankylosaurids. These expanded the understanding of evolution, biodiversity and palaeoecology in East Asia. While many examples of the Jehol Biota from this area are not well constrained in terms of their stratigraphy and geochronology, previous studies have generally suggested that fossils from this region represent the second or third phase of Jehol Biota development. This paper reviews fossils, stratigraphic correlations, tectonic history and age estimates for the less well-studied outcrops of the Shandong Peninsula that host the Jehol Biota. We report three new 40 Ar/ 39 Ar ages for the Qingshang Group and discuss how these somewhat imprecise ages still constrain chronostratigraphic interpretation for the fossil-rich units.