The Honduran president has dispatched troops to protect a "lost city" rediscovered deep in the jungle amid fears that looters could pillage ancient artefacts from the abandoned home of an unknown civilisation.

There were deep divisions among the expedition team that found the site in the Mosquitia rainforest about whether to remove ancient relics for safekeeping because of the risk of looting, or leave them intact, it has emerged.

The archaeologists in the expedition won the day when they flatly opposed digging up and moving any artefacts to the capital Tegucigalpa, despite the dangers that priceless objects could be lost forever if looters found the site.

Chris Fisher, the US lead archaeologist, argued that the scientific value of the artefacts would be destroyed if they were excavated too abruptly as they needed to be studied in their setting amid the buried remains of plazas and a pyramid.