Quick Answer. When a solid turns into a liquid it is called fusion, more commonly referred to as melting. When a material moves from one state of matter into another it is called a phase transition. Fusion is just one of approximately different states that matter can phase through.
Before the dinosaurs, there were Triops. Fossil Triops more than 200 million years old have been discovered. By comparison, dinosaurs date back only about 60 million years...just 'youngsters' in terms of geologic time. Triops are distant relatives of trilobites. Triops means three-eyes while the name trilobite means three lobed or three segments.
This was the result of the separation of the northern and southern land masses that began in the Jurassic Period. The recently discovered large theropod Abelisaurus comahuensis, from Patagonia, Argentina, looked a little like Albertosaurus from Alberta, Canada, particularly in its size and lifestyle. But parts of its skull led two Argentinian paleontologists to put it in its own family, the Abelisauridae.