 Glaessner also did early work on the classification of the pre-Cambrian lifeforms now known as the Ediacaran biota, which he proposed were the early antecedents of modern lifeforms.Glaessner was born in Aussig in the former Kingdom of Bohemia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in the Czech Republic).He was a research associate at the in Vienna from 1923 to 1932, and starting in 1925 attended the University of Vienna, where he received a doctorate in law in 1929, and a Ph.D. in geology and paleontology in 1931.