Age of top chess players

I heard in a book I recently read that Chess is dominated by young people. I couldn't find a good source to check this though. So I went ahead and looked at the top ranked players in America:


Born 1987Born 1974Born 1975Born 1983Born 1975Born 1960Born 1991Born 1962Born 1970Born 1956

1	Nakamura, Hikaru (12641216)
2	Kamsky, Gata (12528459)
3	Onischuk, Alexander (12625186)
4	Akobian, Varuzhan (12740522)
5	Shulman, Yury (12741541)
6	Seirawan, Yasser (10509459)
7	Hess, Robert L (12749774)
8	Ehlvest, Jaan (12514557)
	Stripunsky, Alexander (12715435)
10	Christiansen, Larry M (10460921)

The youngest player in the top 10 is therefore 19 years old, the oldest is 54. This is a much wider range than I actually expected. A 35 year range between the youngest and oldest player is pretty impressive.