YOU don’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar to know that dinosaurs became extinct about 66 million years ago.

Yet a high school student’s statement that he shot dead his neighbour’s pet dinosaur saw police officers called to the school.

Alex Stone, a 16-year-old student at Summerville High School in the town of Summerville in South Carolina, said that his class was asked to write a few sentences about themselves and to list a “status” as if they were filling in their Facebook page, WCSC-TV reported.

The teen wrote “I killed my neighbour’s pet dinosaur.” In the status section, he said he wrote: “I bought the gun to take care of the business.”

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That prompted the school to call in Summerville Police Department. Stone was arrested and later charged with disorderly conduct after he argued with officers, who searched fruitlessly for a gun in his school bag and locker. He has also been suspended from school.

Stone’s mother, Karen Gray, is angry that she was not called before the police.

“I could understand if they made him rewrite it because he did have ‘gun’ in it,” she said.

“(But) I mean first of all we don’t have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he’s not even old enough to buy a gun.”

Stone said he meant no harm and is surprised his words could be construed that way.

“I regret it because they put it on my record, but I don’t see the harm in it,” he said. “I think there might have been a better way of putting it, but I think me writing like that, it shouldn’t matter unless I put it out towards a person.”