The specific name refers to the Wucaiwan area, itself meaning "five-color bay" because of the many-colored layers.

The holotype specimen, IVPP V14725, consists of partly crushed, disarticulated bones that are largely preserved three-dimensionally.

The same is true for the rosette, bearing two pairs of forward pointing laniaries, formed by a narrowing of the snout behind these long fangs.

Except for the first rather straight pair, the teeth were recurved, sharply pointed, covered with smooth enamel and circular in cross-section but equipped with two keels providing cutting edges.

Sericipterus has, after a comprehensive cladistic analysis of the Pterosauria, been placed as the sister taxon of Angustinaripterus in the Rhamphorhynchinae, a clade which also includes other large-bodied "rhamphorhynchoids", living inland as predators of small tetrapods and preserved in terrestrial sediments.