The Adare Basin is a geologic structural basin located north-east of Cape Adare of Antarctica, for which its named, and north of the western Ross Sea. The Adare basin is an extensional rift basin located along a seafloor spreading center. Centrally located in the Adare Basin is the Adare Trough, the failed arm of the tertiary spreading ridge separating East and West Antarctica, similar in structure to The East Africa Rift System. The extension of this rift system, known as the West Antarctic Rift System, is highly recorded in a series of magnetic anomalies which run along the seafloor at the extinct, north-south trending, Adare spreading axis.