It is known from a juvenile specimen, holotype CYGB-0035, an almost complete articulated skeleton of a hatchling also showing soft parts, such as the flight membrane and pycnofibres, compressed on a plate and counterplate.

The genus name combines a reference to the Ningcheng district in Inner Mongolia with a Latinised Greek pteron, "wing".

The specific name honours Ms Liu Jingyi who collected the fossil and donated it to science.

It shared the relative proportions of the first and second phalanx of the flight finger with the Ctenochasmatidae, and especially Eosipterus found in the same formation, but showed no further synapomorphies of that group, so that Lü abstained from placing it in that clade.

The fully formed flight membrane was seen as confirmation of a hypothesis by Mark Unwin that pterosaurs displayed little parental care, their "babies" being able to fly shortly after hatching.