Described from only a single juvenile fossil specimen found in Liaoning, China, Scansoriopteryx is a sparrow-sized animal that shows adaptations in the foot indicating an arboreal (tree-dwelling) lifestyle.

[4] The provenance of the Scansoriopteryx type specimen is uncertain, as it was obtained from private fossil dealers who did not record exact geologic data.

[7] A relative of Scansoriopteryx, Yi, suggests that this elongated third finger supported a membranous wing of some kind alongside feathers.

The authors argued that this anomaly indicates the forelimbs played an important role in locomotion even at an extremely early developmental stage.

Scansoriopteryx has a well-preserved foot, and the authors interpreted the hallux as reversed, the condition of a backward-pointing toe being widespread among modern tree-dwelling birds.

[6] The describing authors stated that the long hand and strongly curved claws are adaptations for climbing and moving around among tree branches.

These adaptations for grasping ability in all four limbs makes it likely that Epidendrosaurus spent a significant amount of time living in trees.

The provenance of Scansoriopteryx is uncertain, though Wang et al. (2006), in their study of the age of the Daohugou, suggest that it probably hails from the same beds, and thus is likely a synonym of Epidendrosaurus.

Studies of dinosaur relationships have found Scansoriopteryx to be a close relative of true birds and a member of the clade Avialae.

[1] These two specimens are so similar that they may be the same genus, in which case Article 21 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) would give priority to Scansoriopteryx.

This situation was used as an example in a proposed amendment to the ICZN by Jerry Harris that would consider electronic articles with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) that are subsequently available in print to qualify as "publication" for naming purposes.

[2] Czerkas and Yuan used the suite of primitive and birdlike characters in Scansoriopteryx to argue for an unorthodox interpretation of dinosaur evolution.

Scansoriopteryx also lacks a fully perforated acetabulum, the hole in the hip socket which is a key characteristic of Dinosauria and has traditionally been used to define the group.

Czerkas and Yuan called it a "proto-maniraptoran", supporting the hypothesis of Gregory S. Paul that the larger, ground-dwelling maniraptorans like Velociraptor evolved from small, flying or gliding forms that lived in trees.