Getting only the most recent bookmark?

Question

So, I was thinking I'd use WordPress' Bookmarks/Links content type to populate a slider...

...Except there are a grand total of four functions interacting with this part of WordPress.

I don't think you can even access these with a WP_Query object, and it seems all date-related data attached to these is in relation to the last update of the link itself (I.e., when the linked-to page is updated).

Is there any way to even retrieve only the most recently-added bookmark?

(For more of a semi-related discussion question for the comments -- if this aspect of WP is so woefully underdeveloped 3 versions of the CMS in, why not just farm out this functionality to a plugin? Simply backwards compatibility?)