It was collected from the dinosaur-bearing beds of the Sihetun locality, of the Yixian Formation, Shangyuan, near the city of Beipiao in Liaoning province.

[1] The single fossil is an incomplete semi-articulated skeleton the size of a sparrow.

It includes both feet, the right leg, the sternum, part of the right arm, and fragmentary coracoids and pubes.

It has advanced flight, perching, and respiratory adaptations like a long, deeply keeled sternum, a pair of anterolateral processes on the sternum near the articulations with the coracoids, fused, short, metatarsals, and highly curved pedal claws indicating good perching ability.

However, a 2012 re-analysis by Jingmai O'Connor showed that it was in fact an enantiornithine similar to Eoalulavis.