I noticed that my screenshot displayed only modification dates after I'd already restarted and cleared the excess files, uploaded the screenshot, and posted.
I reeeally spaced and didn't think to change my post, though, because any time and anywhere I've ever looked on my deuced Mac(hina), every file that displays both creation and modification dates shows them as being identical, and I proceeded on the assumption that it's universal in OS X (which, on reflection, is a ridiculous notion) and that the two time stamps would have been identical had I looked. (Is there a pref that governs that, and is there a Terminal command I can run that will set a pref to show both dates in all list view windows so I don't have to do a command-J every time I open one?)
And in a different vein, do swap files actually get modified? For no particular reason other than a very rudimentary understanding of their functionality, I've always assumed that they're created in their final form.
And if they do, is it at all likely that they'd get modified in order (which, of course, begs the question)?
My MBP is maxed out with 8 GB of RAM, and I never see swap files other than when I'm editing music files, so this was a real eye-opener, because all I was doing when the files were created was trying to view some web pages in Safari, and either they, it, or both were being very recalcitrant. (Safari crashed twice.)