  The production of $J/\Psi$ mesons in central collisions of heavy nuclei is
investigated as a function of collision energy. Two contributions are
considered simultaneously: early (hard) production coupled with subsequent
suppression in a Quark-Gluon Plasma, as well as thermal recombination of
primordially produced $c$ and $\bar c$ quarks at the hadronization transition.
Whereas the former still constitutes the major fraction of the observed
$J/\Psi$ abundance at SpS energies, the latter dominates the yield at RHIC. The
resulting excitation function for the number of $J/\Psi$'s over open charm
pairs exhibits nontrivial structure around $\sqrt{s} \simeq 30$ AGeV, evolving
into a significant rise towards maximal RHIC energy. We study this feature
within different (thermal) scenarios for $J/\Psi$ suppression, including
parton-induced quasifree destruction as a novel mechanism.
